


A Little Death Round the Eyes

by PatsyDecline



Category: Dead To Me (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Blood, F/F, Non-Graphic Descriptions of Violence, Slow Burn, Vampire!Jen, just so much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:22:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25399837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PatsyDecline/pseuds/PatsyDecline
Summary: The Vampire!AU that no one asked for.
Relationships: Judy Hale/Jen Harding
Comments: 82
Kudos: 139





	1. The Price of a Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lagunabitchgc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lagunabitchgc/gifts).



> This started life as a joke and I have ruined it by taking it much too seriously. 
> 
> Big thank you to readtheroomfucko and begaydocrimes for tireless support and beta work
> 
> I just got a twitter so if anyone wants to add me, feel free. It's @patsydecIine (the L is an upper case i due to a user with no tweets or followers taking what is obviously MY username) 
> 
> WARNING - There's a scene in this where Jen remembers being turned and nothing violent or graphic happens really but it reads as very non-con so please keep that in mind if it's something you could be affected by.

The running helps, she thinks. 

She goes out slightly later than the other Laguna Beach runners while the air is still heavy with the scent of their sweat and adrenaline so she can still feel the thrill of the hunt. She picks a scent out of the panoply; a victim. No, not a victim. Emphatically  _ not _ a victim, but a target. One scent to track, to keep her senses sharp and her skills honed. Mostly, the trail would come to a dead end and dissipate before it became any real temptation for her. Only on occasion would the scent become so strong that she knew her prey was nearby; a living breathing animal she would have to forcibly rip herself away from before finding them. 

This morning was one of those mornings. Jen had put on her runners’ costume, light and breathable and streamlined, though she didn’t need any of those things; fitting in was a crucial part of this game and this was the required uniform. There was a breeze that morning; her target’s scent had disappeared and reappeared a few times during the chase. The intoxicating thrill of it throbbed inside her each time she resigned herself to losing the trail only to pick it up again. But now it's too strong and too real and her instincts try to seize control of her. 

She can’t see her yet. Small mercies. If the woman had been right in front of her all of a sudden, Jen knew she wouldn’t have been able to stop herself. Not this morning, not after the game of cat and mouse that Jen had been playing with her. Her little mouse had saved its own life by sheer chance. ‘Her, not it’, she chides. This is a person with friends and family and responsibilities and she isn’t going to change that today. Jen stops her run and grips a lamppost, going through the motions of stretching out her quads as she tries to breathe and centre herself. Her fingers press hard into the cool metal of the lamppost and Jen closes her eyes while she goes through all the reasons she can’t carry on down this road and sink her teeth into whoever is standing around that corner, even though every cell in her body is screaming at her to do it. 

Turn around. Turn around and go home. Stop thinking about it,  _ stopitstopitstopit. _ Control yourself and go the fuck home. 

She pushes off the lamppost, propelling herself in the opposite direction and running as fast as her body will let her. If she just runs fast enough, the ancient part of her brain, the part which controls all of her darkest instincts, won’t even realise what’s happened until it’s too late. 

When she gets home she slams the door closed behind her, leaning her back against the hard reassuring surface as she tries to calm herself. Nothing happened. No one was hurt. It was close, but close doesn’t count for anything. No one’s life is ruined by ‘close’. 

Maybe it isn’t just the running that she needs. 

When her heart has finally slowed back into its preternaturally slow thump, she kicks off her running shoes and pads into the kitchen. When she was building the house, the kitchen had seemed like the most absurd indulgence. There needed to be a kitchen of course, both for keeping up appearances and so she could eventually sell the house when she needed to move on. But maybe she’d gotten a tad carried away with her imaginary lifestyle when she was upgrading to marble splashbacks and installing the double width kitchen island. The whole house was an absurdity really, far too large for one person so what did it matter if she installed a huge, theatrical kitchen. She was a pantomime of a human, it seemed fitting. 

This home made more sense before the accident, when Ted was still around sometimes. Another presence in the house to stop her rattling around inside the empty rooms alone. He, like everything else in their lives, had been an imitation. A pretend husband to make their lives seem palatable and uninteresting to outside observers. In reality, the relationship had been a lifelong commitment but of a different and entirely more complex nature. 

She had met Ted way back in 1857, two years after the death of her husband, Charles. His death had been sheer bad luck, caught in the crossfire of two rival New York street gangs, and it had lit the fuse which ignited every good thing in her life into flames, leaving her utterly destroyed. Even after all these years when Jen thinks back to that day, she has a crystal clear image of standing in the doorway of their small Brooklyn home, crumbling to the ground as she hears the news, trapped in slow motion and her two boys’ arms wrapping tightly around her. It’s the last thing she remembers clearly before what turned into years of going through the motions of her life, sleepwalking through the days that followed. 

She stays alive to look after her boys, Charlie Jr. and Henry, but every drop of purpose or enjoyment had evaporated the moment Charles left them. The image of him haunts her, his broken body bleeding out on the side of a road, everyone too consumed with their own petty vendettas to help him or even notice. She sees him scared and hurt, surrounded by people but utterly alone and sleep never comes as easily to her ever again. 

For years she became a shadow, weightless and drifting through the streets of New York; existing, but barely. 

And then suddenly there was Ted. 

Jen never asked how he found her. Whether he had followed her from the street, or read about her in the new edition of Harris’s List, or maybe it was pure chance that had brought him to her door that late August night. It had never seemed like the right moment to ask and, she supposes, it doesn’t really matter now how it happened, just that it did. 

Now it is too late to ask. 

He had come to her rooms that thick summer night, a stranger dressed in a fine tailcoat jacket and a high neck shirt that wilted a little in the heat. He strode smoothly to her bed and threw money on it. But it was too much money for her services,  _ far  _ too much money, and no good had ever come of that before. Every penny she had earned in her life she had worked hard for; she looked heavily at the bills which now littered her bed and thought of the toll it would take. 

He told her his name, Edward back then, and when she went to lift her skirts for him he stopped her and lay her down fully clothed on the bed. Thrown a little by the change in direction, she stayed still and awaited further instructions. He took off his jacket and draped it gently over the bedpost, before stopping and just looking. His eyes had a hunger that seemed entirely separate from the usual need she saw in the eyes of her visitors. Who is this man, she thought, this stranger, this Edward? 

He had thrown enough money at her that she would be able to keep a roof over her children’s heads for three months, maybe four, but so far had taken nothing. And something was always going to be taken. Being looked at by him made her feel pinned; nothing bound her but that both was and wasn't true. He looked her over with the fierce stare of a lion as she lay on the bed in her tawdry dress on a crumpled bed of paper bills, waiting. She waited for whatever this quiet ritual was to end, before he pressed his body down into hers. The soft linen of his shirt sleeves brushed delicately across her arms and she looked into his eyes for some clue and what he might need from her. 

"I don't know what you want from me" said Jen in a voice that was as soft and passive as she could manage. It went against her nature, this subservience toward men, but she needed to earn an independent living and in those days a widow with children had very few options. She would do anything for her children, short of dropping them off at the local orphanage to be ushered into adulthood by the stoney faced nuns there. Even if some days they all believed they might be better off if she would just do it. Well, they couldn't get rid of her that easily. 

She lay, a coiled spring, ready for whatever is to happen next, whether she needed to fight back or disappear into a dream world totally separate from her physical self. 

"I want you to beg" he growled, deep and rumbling and she felt the sound ripple directly into her ribs where his torso pressed tight against her. It's a firm weight that held her, not sticky like this should have been in the summer heat but cool to the touch and heavier than you'd reasonably assume from the stature of this man. 

Jen felt his cool breath on her face and in another world it might be a refreshing breeze, but he's too close. This was always the worst part for her, the anticipation, when she had to swallow the revulsion that boils inside of her and fight the powerful urge to slam the heel of her palm into their noses. These sad, dull eyed men who come to her, think she should be grateful for the sweaty little notes that they press into her hand with a patronising air of "you're welcome, don't spend it all at once". This man was different somehow, but the same. 

His words had been hanging in the air too long, ignored, silently fought against. She would not be cowed by this stranger and his money. She would lie for him, close her eyes for him, allow him to take a part of herself that many men had taken from her before. They all came to her and took a piece of her away with them, a souvenir of her body that left an empty space inside. This was her life after Charles, they would taketaketake until there was nothing left; she only hoped that day would come after Charlie and Henry became men who could go out into the world without her. 

A cool hand grabbed her jaw and pushed it upwards to challenge her blatant defiance, his skin was smooth against her throat and had clearly never known toil. She knew in that moment that it would be so easy for him to push down on the soft flesh of her throat and maybe that is what he wanted from her. Maybe this was what her life had been leading up to and in the split second of this realisation Jen just felt relief. She wouldn't need to fight any more for every tiny crumb; she'd been so tired for so long. Jen knew that she should be afraid but any fear she feels is just for her boys. Charlie was maybe old enough to get by, he's a survivor, but Henry was so pure and so young. The world would take too much from him and she worried that one day he'll become empty too. 

Edward became frustrated by her silence and curled his fist into her hair, roughly pulling to one side. He's going to take what he wants from her regardless so Jen doesn't give him the satisfaction of her compliance. And he takes what he has purchased, pressing his lips against her exposed neck and kissing her there. The anticipation over, Jen closed her eyes. She can fight this rush inside her, calm the urgent voice that tells her to run because she can't. She can't move, she can't go anywhere so her only responsibility in this moment is to exist and continue existing. 

She thinks of a day out they had many years ago, a trip to a small beach and the memories are fragmented because at the time, she didn't know that would be a day she would want to recall in every minute detail; her best day. She had just passed the time then, let happiness wash over her like an abundant commodity and not something which she should have been hoarding, labelling and storing for the famine that would come to her later. She was so careless back then. She thinks of the boys, younger then and squealing in happiness as the waves washed up their legs and splashed cold droplets at their faces. She thinks of being in the water, a large wave crashing against her and it's cold and sharp. 

_ Wait, no, that's wrong.  _

The sharpness ripped through her, and she's dragged away from her beautiful family, from that perfect day and her back to her drab rooms, her bed, the pain that claws deep at her neck for a moment before she's suddenly lighter. 

Jen has no concept of how long it lasted, how long that stranger pressed his face into her neck and sucked at her. It could be just a moment, it could have been hours, where she is pinned but floating, drowning in a peace that she's never known before and she doesn't understand. 

When she woke up, she was alone. And COLD. A cold which sits deep in her bones and makes her forget that she has ever experienced warmth. Her body is so far past shivering that it just convulses helplessly. 

She doesn't know until later that what she felt was her body dying. 

\-------

Jen opens the fridge, reaching for one of the bulbous blood bags that lay on one shelf of an otherwise empty fridge. She doesn’t warm it. She doesn’t feel like she deserves that deeply comforting warmth, not after the close call she’s had. So she decants it straight into a wine glass and carries it, along with her laptop, out onto the deck. 

The morning is gently easing in the warmth of the day so it’s fresh outside. The outdoor furniture is still winning its battle with the heat that will attempt to bake and crack it later in the day. 

Jen flips open the laptop and sips from her glass. Seems like the plan for today is atonement. She looks up the schedules of all the nearby grief groups. Tomorrow won't do at all, it has to be today. This is how it needs to be whenever she gets close to losing control. The shot of bloodlust and chaser of atonement. She needs to see the consequences of her actions and keep those stories with her, picture the bloodshot eyes of grieving relatives and remember why she does this, why she tries so hard to be better than the one who made her. 

And she's in luck, there's one scheduled only 20 mins away that afternoon. Great. 

When you have so many days, just endless days, stretching out in front and behind you, structure is good. It feels impossible now to remember a time from her former life, when days seemed so precious and time was a finite resource. Now time feels like a more fluid concept, something that can stretch out into fine thread or fold in on itself. She can be absorbed in an activity and, without her realising, it will be days later when she finally snaps out of it. So she places markers, little pins which signpost the days for her and help separate one from the next. 

She pulls up into the parking lot of Heisler Park and sits for a moment as the last verse of the song she’s listening to thrashes out and quiets. In the rear view mirror, she smudges her eyeliner slightly. The grieving widow. Her finest role. 

The character of the tear stained widow came to her easily because it was such a short side step from the truth. She had lost someone, the closest person to her, the man people reasonably enough believed to be her husband. And she knew sadness, she knew the deep burrowing grief of mourning a husband she loved, she knew what it was to lose grip on everything in life that matters because part of you died too the moment they had. So she slips on this character like a second skin. Sometimes she picks a new name for him, to keep the side step to the side. Sometimes she needs the distance or risks losing herself in the act entirely. 

Jen hasn't entirely fixed her story as she walks across the park to the gazebo by toward the shoreline. To buy herself a few more moments to let the character really crystallise in her mind, she makes herself a coffee from the complimentary snacks table. As soon as the first touch of it reaches her lips, she regrets it; the coffee is lukewarm and astringent and she spits it back into the cup immediately. The next moment a woman is approaching the coffee pot and she can't, on this day of atonement, allow someone else to experience whatever hate crime has been enacted upon that poor, innocent coffee. 

"Skip the coffee, it's awful" she says and looks over to take in the woman who has approached her. Her eyes are huge and brown and shining at Jen. Her clothing is floral and bursting with colour, not the outfit at all of someone concerned with performing their grief as Jen is doing. She smells like night blooming jasmine and vetiver and something else familiar but she needs a little longer to place the memory. 

"I made it."  _ forfuckssake  _ Jen had come here for some anonymous catharsis, not to start some petty personal drama, “I’m sorry”. 

That sounded deeply disingenuous and it hangs heavy in the air for a few moments while Jen desperately casts about for something else to say. 

“I’m kidding! It’s terrible. I’m Judy,” she says, extending a hand to Jen which she shakes, unsure of this weirdly formal gesture given the context, “Jen.” 

“Ooh, cold hands, warm heart!” Judy chirps at her, rubbing her hands together briskly to warm them after their shake as though the 80 degree heat wouldn’t fix that in no time. 

“That sure is the phrase,”  _ and whoever came up with it was a fuckin’ idiot.  _

This didn’t happen to Jen often. People didn’t just talk to her like they assumed she wanted to be talked to. They usually took one look at her icy blue eyes and sharp sartorial choices and thought better of it, which really suited everyone. She was so used to living with one foot outside of the world around her that this sudden gear change was taking a moment. This wasn’t part of her plan. 

“So, you come to this group often?” Her tone is playful and light, a hint of flirtation. Jen has been silently dropping hints that she really just wants to be left alone to quietly do some mourning spectatorship, but Judy has casually breezed past every one to...joke around with her? Jen honestly can’t remember the last time someone shared a joke with her. When did people stop joking with her?

“It’s my first time.” At this group at least. She drops in and out of all the local support groups, has done so for years, whenever she needs a reminder of why she’s doing this. Why she’s trying to be better. 

“Mine too!”

They take the last two seats in the circle of mourners inside the gazebo. They’re across from each other and Jen sees Judy looking at her, even when Jen is looking away she can feel Judy's eyes on her. It's confusing and it throws her off. 

She needs this quiet moment of looking into the eyes of these people, seeing their pain and the consequences of what happens if her self control ever lapses. And it has of course, she hasn't always been as strong as she is now, but not for a long time and she can’t directly examine the memories too closely. They seem too intoxicating and too visceral, if she thinks of them in too much detail, the temptation would be overwhelming and she can't risk it, not after so long. So she skims over it; it happened but her mind just washes over the memory fast and in a blur, they are there but just as a suggestion. Keep them locked away but not too securely that you forget. She could never forget. 

As they speak, she thinks of the trail of devastation that one lifeless body leaves in its wake, the person who finds it, the people who take it away, the people who must investigate, the families and friends left behind. It keeps her grounded. She details the feeling so she can bring it out next time she’s in the street and hunt becomes too much, a bullet pointed list of reasons to be better. 

“Last week, we started talking about the F word...” 

There’s a short huff of a breath and Jen looks over to Judy who is trying not to laugh. Her eyes lock on to Jen’s and without words they seem to understand each other perfectly,  _ ‘Are we actually about to discuss fucking the dead?’ ‘What the hell kind of group have we come to?’  _ And it’s warm and friendly and entirely unexpected. 

When Jen turns her focus back to the group, she's caught off guard and suddenly she’s speaking in twisted half truths about why she’s there. A car accident: true, but a car should never have been able to kill Ted, it was the bit of shrapnel that had pierced his heart which did it. So impossibly unlikely that she would almost have laughed about it, if she wasn’t dealing with suddenly being alone after two hundred years. She’s struggling without him: true, but their relationship was complex. Never a great love affair but when you spend hundreds of years with a person, your relationship will eventually cover the entire spectrum of emotion from the most profound hate to the most intense love and back again. She couldn’t sleep: true, but she never really needed sleep, she wanted it badly though because otherwise Jen felt suffocated by the endless time that immortality allowed. She didn’t know how to be alone: True. 

A whole truth. 

As she’s speaking, Judy looks at her with such profound kindness that she feels like a fraud. After seeing Jen sharing with the group, Judy begins to contribute too. Jen watches her as she presents her trauma with the group, her fiance leaving her, multiple miscarriages, one so far along she began lactating and still had to go through labour, knowing already her child would never take its first breath. 

As Judy spoke, Jen saw an entirely new side to this person who until this point had been a very incongruous presence in the group. Her smiles and shining eyes faded and disappeared to make way for a new version of Judy that was fragile and wounded, the delicate thread stitching her together seeming like it could snap at any moment and leave her to bleed out from her broken heart. 

She stared at Judy as she spoke her pain to the group and, as the gentle breeze changed direction slightly, she suddenly recognised the familiar scent that Judy carried. 

It was her. 

Her runner. 

Her lucky little mouse. 

The craving that she’d fought off this morning crashed over her like a body blow to the chest. This woman, this fascinating and beautiful woman, was who she would have seen if she had been weaker. If she had given in and turned that last corner, it would have been Judy’s soft face looking back at her. Judy, who she would have pressed against a wall and held tightly in her arms while she struggled against Jen's grasp. Judy, whose neck she would have pressed her lips against. 

Jen needed to leave right now. 

A moment later the group ends anyway so her departure isn’t as abrupt as it could have been. She puts her sunglasses on to hide her pupils that have blown wide and walks away from the gazebo as fast as she can without breaking into a conspicuous run. 

_ Stopitstopitstopitstopit _

Before she’s gotten very far, Judy is there at her side and she’s talking at her but the words are almost drowned out by the thunderous sound of Judy’s pulse that beats loud in Jen’s ears. She stops breathing so she doesn’t catch her scent again and, when Judy hands her a scrap of paper with her phone number on,  _ “Call me. We can not sleep together,”  _ Jen just nods in response and carries on walking. 

That was too close. Way too close. 


	2. In Defense of Small Existences

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, a big thanks to my best babes, Readtheroomfucko and Bgaydocrimes for betaing and generally helping me making this exist.

It takes a few days for Jen to completely come back to herself. 

She drives out to the state park and runs. Really runs, as fast as she can, until her limbs feel weighted and drag her back down to earth. She stands on the sheer cliff edge of a mountain and screams into the valley, forcing her anger and frustration out into the trees, listening as her screams echo back to her and disappear into the distance. 

Taking herself away for a while is what she needs. Sometimes the act is too convincing and she almost forgets that she isn’t human like them. She may look like them and sound like them but it’s effort to maintain that facade. Sometimes she doesn’t have the energy and just needs to remove herself from society completely. 

She’s home now and she feels calm and in control, or at least as calm and in control as she ever feels. After a long, hot shower to wash the dust and grime from her body, Jen gets dressed and it feels good to be back in her armour, smooth sleek skirts and silk blouses that cut an intimidating silhouette. 

Chris’ church is a bright and airy building and Jen can see it might be a fairly pleasant place to spend time if it didn’t make her skin feel like it was on fire. She doesn’t know how he can stand it but he’s been doing it for years so something must be working for him. 

When Ted turned him sometime in the late 1980’s, he gave some bullshit reasons that she can’t even remember now but it was obvious the real reason was simply that he found it amusing to turn a man of God into a _ creature of darkness.  _ If her change was anything to go by, Chris wouldn’t have had any choice in the matter and for the most part, he seems to have ignored the entire thing. He still attends church, still teaches choirs, but now he just moves around every few years so people don’t notice that he hasn’t aged a day. 

Jen doesn’t consider him a brother, not really, but they are certainly bound together somehow. Unlikely companions that share a secret and take the edge off a looming loneliness that stretches out before them into eternity. Although Chris isn’t alone like she is. He still has relationships with humans and Jen has no idea how he manages it, but he's always been very "appreciate the time you have with the ones you love" about it which frankly makes Jen want to put her fist through a fucking wall. Maybe it’s because he’s still so young. He hasn’t lived to see all his loved ones die around him yet. He can disappear from their lives but the world is different now; you can check up on people without revealing yourself. It’s so simple to go online and see how your relatives are doing without revealing that you aren’t dead like they believe, just eternally young. Removed from them to protect them, though she assumes it doesn’t feel much like protection when they’re grieving the loss. 

Jen couldn’t bear the heartache of loving someone who could only be around for the blink of an eye. She had already lost too much and, while the loneliness sometimes ate away at the very core of her, it was better than the alternative. To love and to be loved was a false promise that was too fleeting to be worthwhile. 

Jen walks down the centre aisle of the chapel and her skin pricks and burns from being inside this sacred place. She’s not going to burst into flames like some sort of absurd fairytale, but it’s certainly not a pleasant sensation. If Chris can stomach it so can she and, honestly, it’s good for her to be around the young from time to time. A group of children rehearse their song and dance number near the altar. Henry would have loved this so much when he was little, she thinks, and it sticks like a shard in her chest. If only her boys had lived in a time when children were allowed to be children and given the space to enjoy childish things. Jen's heart hurts for a past she cannot change. 

Chris looks so full of energy and excitement, standing on the side of the stage and coaching them. “That was great, guys! Brandy, I’m not sure those arms were as full of the holy spirit as they could have been. And Justin, you’ve gotta sing to the back pew, okay? They can’t praise him if they can’t hear you. Okay, take five!” The children scatter and Jen tucks herself into a pew to avoid the rush. 

“Jen! I have someone for you to meet!” Chris dives into a carrier on the side of the stage and lifts out a tiny puppy. It can’t be more than 2 months old and it’s just unbearably cute. 

“You and Alan got a puppy? You’ve been together... what, ten minutes?” Jen says in absolute disbelief. 

“There’s no speed limit on the highway of love!” 

“Okay, but it’s a very short road and I can’t have you speeding off that cliff.” Chris isn’t listening at all, as the puppy licks his nose and flaps her ears at him. 

_ "Hi, I’m Adele.”  _

“I don’t know what this voice is.” 

_ “It’s me, Adele, this is my voice!” _

Chris hands Jen the puppy and she’s just so adorable that she’s almost angry about it. Chris smiles at her, “I got her as a little luxury snack but when I looked into those eyes, I just knew it was true love.” 

The softness of her fur and the warmth of her tiny breath on Jen’s cheek reminds her how long it’s been since she’s been this close to another living being. She’s been holding the entire world at arms length for so long. Too long maybe. She holds this tiny life to her chest and feels, for just a moment, her hard edges softening slightly. 

This is why she holds on to her unlikely friendship with Chris. They could not have been more different but she couldn’t lose these tiny insights into a world more lighthearted than her own. It was too late for her but Jen drew some comfort from knowing her life could run in parallel to Chris’ world, a brighter one which she could catch a glimpse of occasionally. 

“Are you okay? You look...vulnerable. It’s a strange color on you,” he sounds so full of tender concern, as though she isn’t almost totally impervious to every possible hazard in Laguna Beach. 

“I’m fine. I’m just not sleeping.” 

“You don’t need to sleep.” 

“Shut up.”

\---

It’s the following night when Jen is lying awake at an hour when the world around her is asleep. This is why she likes to be unconscious during these hours; the quiet is crushing. All the distractions that get her through the days suddenly still during the night and Jen is left with just her thoughts. She thinks of Chris, tucked up in bed with Alan and Adele and how the image brings stark contrast to her own. 

Maybe she could use a new distraction actually. 

She gets out of bed to rummage in her closet, finding the jacket she wore that day and fishes the scrap of paper from where she shoved it in her pocket and forgot about it; scribbled numbers and a name,  _ Judy.  _ Maybe this person, who so casually breezed past all her defences would be someone who could distract her for just a moment. A little light relief to break up the tedium of a long quiet night. And she did say she would be up anyway. 

She’s listening to the dial tone with her phone pressed against her ear before she even really acknowledges what she’s doing and suddenly the quiet night is broken with the soft voice of Judy down the line. 

“Hi, it’s Jen from... the grief group thing?” Jen suddenly has a stark moment of self awareness that she’s just called a total stranger in the middle of the night without a purpose and she hasn’t planned anything she was going to say, “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m calling you. Is it too late?”

“Yeah, i’m totally asleep right now.” Against all rational odds, Judy’s voice is friendly and warm as though she couldn’t think of anything she’d rather be doing that talking to Jen in the middle of the night, “Are you in bed? ...What are you wearing?”

That throws her a little and Jen tries but fails to rally, “What?” 

“ _ What are you wearing?”  _ Judy’s voice drops suggestively down the line and Jen doesn’t really understand the rules of this game, so she just blusters past it, “Ahh, black sweatpants and an old band shirt from a Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan concert.” 

“Mmmm,  _ slower”  _ Judy purrs. 

“You’re a weird person, Judy,” and Judy responds with a fond burst of laughter. 

“Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan, huh? I'm not sure that’s the most obvious of lineups but I respect their bold choices.”

“Well, no one made good choices in the 80s.” Jen hears muffled sounds in the background, “Are you... watching TV?” 

  
“Yeah! The Facts of Life is on.” “Oh? What channel?” 

And that’s how it begins. What Jen thought would be the briefest of distractions for one quiet night, seamlessly turns into a routine. In the beginning, they call each other and soon Judy is turning up on her doorstep with multiple wine bottles in her hands and a box of cookies shoved precariously under one arm. 

They sit on Jen’s outdoor sofa and watch The Facts of Life with varying levels of attention on the actual screen and it’s... comfortable? Jen’s days become punctuated by this routine that is so foreign to her that it has no right feeling as natural as it does. 

That night, the temperature has dropped slightly and they share a blanket, draped casually across them both as though they’re known each other forever. The wine has made Judy careless in her movements and one hand falls onto Jen’s thigh and squeezes fondly. Jen freezes and stares at Judy’s hand that has touched her like it’s the most natural thing in the world. 

“Oh shit, I’m sorry, I know you don’t like being touched,” and Judy goes to move her hand away to remedy her transgression but that’s the last thing Jen wants. 

“No!” she barks slightly too loudly, “No, it’s fine, it’s just... you’re very warm.” 

Judy settles her hand back on Jen’s thigh and runs her palm back and forth across her leg with a little laugh.

“Yeah, everyone always tells me I run hot. I’m _ great _ to have around when it gets cold though.” 

“So... you moved to California?” Jen smiles at her and watches the soft laughter spread across Judy’s face and the little lines that dance around her eyes. 

“Yeah, I really messed up there.”

They go back to quietly watching the TV and Jen doesn’t hear a word of it. Her focus narrows entirely to the hand that rests on her leg, radiating warmth into her skin. Judy’s thumb sometimes idly strokes back and forth or pushes in a little when Judy laughs and Jen can’t think about anything else outside of that soft, warm point of contact. 

This doesn’t happen to Jen. The only times that she has any kind of human contact close to this, it was always on her terms, times when she had become gripped by the dark part of her brain which seizes control when her guard drops and she finds herself pinning her prey. The only time she ever touches the skin of another is when she holds down their wrists in restraint, or wraps her hand around their throat for a moment to feel the panicked thrum of their pulse against her palm, or when her lips touch their throat as she sinks her teeth into them. She enjoyed those times fleetingly, during the act of taking what she needed, but as soon as she was done the inevitable wave of revulsion hit her. She had taken something that wasn’t hers to take; she had brought sadness and loss to strangers she would never meet all because she couldn’t control herself. 

There was no softness in those moments. 

Jen sits still and does nothing. 

Enjoy the warmth. Just enjoy the softness that Judy has bestowed and do nothing. You can take from Judy without leaving her with nothing left, she thinks. 

Judy laughs and falls gently against Jen’s side, strands of her hair brushing against Jen’s cheek and her sweet scent enveloping Jen entirely. For a brief second, Jen thinks about this in the only way she knows how to process Judy’s contact: by imagining squeezing a hand tightly around her jaw and hearing the gasp that would escape her lips, quickly straddling Judy. The moment where she thinks this is all a joke, when the fear is waiting in the wings but hasn’t made its grand entrance yet. The lighthearted wriggle to test out her boundaries and the inevitable transition to the expression of surprise and fear that she would see in Judy’s face. The push back trying to escape. And the taste of her. The exquisite warmth of her as her skin pulsed against Jen’s lips and her blood spilled freely into Jen’s mouth. 

_ Stopitstopitstopitstopitstopit _

Jen wonders, if she got a taste, would she be able to stop. Not tonight, she wouldn’t want to take anything from Judy that wasn’t freely offered, but maybe one day? She thinks she could. If she started, she is almost entirely sure that she would be able to stop herself. Almost. It doesn’t matter anyway, it’s an absurd fantasy and she’s so embarrassed to even think of it that she would blush if she was able. 

“Hey, I’m going to head off to bed,” Jen says suddenly, lifting Judy’s head gently from her shoulder. “You can’t drive. I can call you a cab or, if you want, you’re welcome to stay in the guest house?” Judy’s gaze is lazy with the wine she’s drunk and it takes a few moments to process what Jen is asking her. 

“Ummm...yes?” she looks at Jen through a haze, trying to see if she got the answer right. 

“Are you staying or going?” 

Judy cocks her head for a moment, still looking more than a little confused, “...Staying?” 

  
“Okay perfect. The guest house is open and I’ll go get you some towels and stuff right now.” 

Jen eases herself up off the sofa, slowly to give Judy time to support her own weight, and goes to the linen closet. She takes a minute to close her eyes and focus on calming herself down. The notion of Judy leaving and simply going home to wherever she lives seems totally unconscionable. She can’t be near her right now but the idea of her being out of arm’s reach is so much worse for reasons she can’t precisely pinpoint. 

Jen grabs a stack of sheets and deposits them unceremoniously next to Judy. She doesn’t really understand the rules of this and feels like her human act is failing miserably but it’s too late to stop whatever this is that she’s already set in motion. 

“Umm, can I get you...anything?” 

Judy looks up at her and her face doesn’t show the slightest hint of fear or apprehension. Jen can’t remember the last time any human looked at her with the warmth that Judy gazes up at her with now.

“I’d love a glass of water but don’t worry, I can get it, it’s fine.” 

“What? I’m...No, I’m getting you a glass of water, Judy. You go get settled, I’ll bring it out.” 

Jen fetches the water and returns to find Judy asleep in the guesthouse, wrapped up like a burrito. She leaves the water on the table beside her and goes to leave, turning back for just a moment to really look at Judy, curled up and peaceful, hair falling across her face and dappled in moonlight. Who is this human who has just breezed into her life as though she’s been around forever? 

Jen takes the last bag of blood out of the fridge and warms it to take upstairs with her. Jen’s just hungry and as soon as that need is sated, it would surely fill up this empty space that she feels aching inside her. That’s what this is. She lies in bed, drinking and letting her eyes fall closed as the thick heat of it slips down her throat, tendrils of warmth reaching into her limbs for the briefest of moments before dissipating, the chill of her returning too fast as always. 

Jen tries to think about Judy, out in the guesthouse. The natural warmth of her, radiating out around her all the time. An abundant resource, just spilling out into the world without the desperate need that Jen felt to cling on to every tiny scrap of it like something precious and fleeting. 

That night, Jen sleeps and for the first time in a long time, it’s just easy. She effortlessly slips into unconsciousness and it’s so painless that she can’t understand what the difficulty has been these past months. When she awakes, there’s a sweet smell coming from downstairs and it takes a few moments for her to recall the events of the previous evening. Judy. She’s still here. 

She stayed. 

When she ventures downstairs, Judy is actually using the kitchen which has been basically ornamental since the house was built. “Hi! Your fridge was looking a little empty so I snuck out and got us some ingredients. How do we feel about eggs florentine, followed by crepes with blueberries?” 

Jen can’t even begin to process the scene in front of her. Judy looks perfectly at home in her house, moving around the kitchen as though she’s lived there for years. She laughs to herself at the understatement of her fridge ‘looking a little empty’ when she knows full well that it was entirely empty, just like all the cupboards and drawers. As she’s taking the whole scene in, Jen realises that she hasn’t responded to the question. 

“Um, okay, sure.”

Judy suddenly looks worried, like she may have overstepped the mark and is suddenly chastising herself. 

“Is this too much? It’s too much, I’m sorry I should have asked.”

“Oh, it definitely is too much. But in the best way. I’m just not used to all of this.” Jen takes a seat and just watches as this little insight into domestic life plays out before her, “Did you sleep okay?”

Judy’s face lights up at her. 

“I did!” 

“Oh good. Me too. Maybe this whole time all I needed was someone close by to chaperone,” Jen huffs out a laugh when Judy looks at her with total earnestness. 

“I was thinking about that actually. I feel like maybe our energies balance each other out, you know?” 

“I was joking but, as they say, whatever gets you to sleep at night.” Secretly, Jen quite enjoys the idea of all her darkness being cancelled out by this little ray of positivity which has somehow found its way into Jen’s life but she would never dream of saying that outloud. 

“How do you like your coffee? Wait, wait let me guess!” Judy stares at her hard, examining her like Jen’s under a microscope, squinting her eyes with a little smile widening across her face, “oh, I know. Macchiato. Oh my god, you’re  _ such _ a macchiato.” 

Jen isn’t sure that she’s even drunk enough coffee to really have a type but she’s willing to trust this obviously profound and accurate decision. 

“Sure, you’re right.” 

Judy’s eyes glitter like she’s just won a prize. 

“I  _ knew  _ it!” 

Moments later, Jen is handed her coffee and it’s bitter with a creamy finish and utterly delicious. She closes her eyes to enjoy it for a while, taking in the scent that will now always remind her of Judy and this one morning where she got to pretend her life was normal. 

“I would offer to help but I don’t cook,” Jen proffers, not really sure where she would even start trying to be helpful in this scene which is playing out in her house. The setting is so familiar and yet Jen feels absolutely at a loss as to what she is supposed to be doing to fit in here. 

“No, no! Don’t worry, I got this. I want to pay you back, for letting me stay,” Judy stirs a pan of water and drops two eggs into the whirlpool at the centre. 

“It was one night, it’s hardly a big deal.”

“Well, I still appreciate it and I still want to make us breakfast.” Judy picks two sliced, English muffins out of the toaster, making this whole complicated dance look effortless and easy. 

“So, what are you doing with the rest of your day?” Jen settles into the neat domesticity of it all.

In all the time that she had been talking to Judy, they had always talked at night, with the one exception of that first time at grief group. It occurs to Jen now that she doesn’t actually know very much about Judy’s day to day life and how she spends her time, between the evenings where they speak of everything and nothing. 

“Oh, I start work at 11, but I need to go in early so I can get a change of clothes,” Judy said lightly, rummaging through drawers to find cutlery to present to Jen.

“Sorry, why are your clothes at work?” 

“Oh right! Yeah, they’re letting me stay at the assisted living facility where I work. Rooms open up all the time!” Judy smiles broadly at her but it isn’t reflected in her eyes, like Jen has touched a nerve. 

  
“I bet they do. Wait, when Steve left did he... kick you out?”

Judy turns back to the stove and busies herself fishing the eggs out of the pan while hiding her face from Jen’s gaze. 

“No, no, it’s not like that. It’s technically his house and I was just living there so it made sense really, and it’s so convenient to stay at work because I can never be late!” 

“So, all the times that we were talking on the phone, you were sitting in an old people’s home?” Jen says with the appropriate sense of incredulity. 

“Some of the time I was laying down,” Judy presents her with a beautiful plate of breakfast and sits beside her as though they do this every morning. 

“Judy, no. Look, no one is using the guest house and you’re welcome to.” Jen makes the offer without really thinking what it might mean to have a human around the house all the time and it’s out of her mouth before any of the million reasons it’s an awful idea have time to formulate properly. 

“Welcome to what?” Judy shakes her head and starts to play with her breakfast before making eye contact with Jen again. 

“To stay. It would be nice. To have someone around.” This is a terrible, terrible idea and Jen has no idea why she’s doubling down on it. But she’s lost her head in this comfortable little moment and she doesn’t want to give it up just yet, this feeling that she’s just a person, sitting down and having breakfast. Drinking coffee. And she isn’t alone. 

Judy looks at her with an expression that’s hopeful but full of caution, like a puppy that’s been rescued and doesn’t understand kindness yet. 

“You don’t have to take pity on me. Just because I’m a 41 year old barren woman living in an assisted living facility.”

“Yes, I do. Seriously, come. I’m not going to ask again. Just say yes.” 

Judy’s eyes widen and she looks impossibly young for a moment. 

“Yes! Now, can I hug you?” 

“No.” But Jen can’t help but smile and opens her arms to Judy who immediately bundles herself into them and presses close. Both of them just stay there for a while and enjoy the moment, Judy resting her head against Jen’s shoulder, a quiet “thank you” whispered into her ear. 

This was a terrible idea that would end badly for everyone. And Jen didn’t regret a thing.


	3. Reykjavik

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta reading and general support from @readtheroomfucko, @loamvessel, @bgaydocrimes and @knebworth.   
> Thank you pals, you have made this so much better than I could have alone. Read all their fic, it's fucking brilliant and you'll love it.

Jen doesn't need to eat, though she can. She's certainly never hungry for food, but now she's probably eating more food these days than she'd ever eaten even when she was alive. When she comes downstairs in the morning, breakfast is already waiting for her. Every evening, Judy comes home from work with a bag of groceries, shouts "Honey, I'm home!" from the front door and just sets herself up in the kitchen, puttering around until a beautiful plate of something is presented on the table. Into the evening, they sit beside each other drinking wine and enjoying the night closing in around them. Jen slowly becomes accustomed to Judy’s presence, the sound of her laughter, her casual touches.

With more signposts to mark the time, suddenly Jen's days get longer and she's no longer trapped in this endless slipstream, one day seamlessly fading into the next and years escape her without notice. Her time has moulded itself around Judy, fitting her neatly into a space Jen didn't know existed. 

One evening, they take a walk down to the beach and sit in little divots they make for themselves in the sand. The waves crash loudly a few metres ahead of them and Jen wonders why she never does this. She’s lived so close to the beach for so long and almost never makes the short walk to the ocean. But why? She’s been missing out on this, the smell of the salt, the fresh night air coming straight off the water, the spray that speckles their skin and dries as salty crystals. 

Judy sparks up a joint, the ember flaring red in the darkness, dancing shadows flitting across her face in the light of the flame. Judy exhales softly and the smoke curls gently upwards before being caught by a breeze. She moves to pass the joint to Jen who shakes her head, “Oh, no thanks. It doesn’t really do anything for me; I think I’m not a ‘drugs’ person.” 

“It’s not drugs, it’s a plant. And it’ll help you sleep. Here you go,” and Judy hands her the joint. It won’t do anything, Jen knows, but she doesn’t want to push the issue when they’re so comfortable in each other’s company at the moment. They smoke together in silence and watch as the last violent reds and oranges disappear behind the horizon along with the setting sun. 

Judy stares out into the darkening sea, her face pensive, “Are you ever lonely?” 

Jen’s immediate reaction is a bark of a laugh which she regrets the moment it leaves her; she can still feel it shattering the air around them long after it’s gone. She can’t decide how to answer the question at first because ‘loneliness is so deeply a part of who I am that without it, I think I’d disappear entirely’ seems a tad dramatic. 

She turns to look into Judy’s face, seeing a melancholy which usually hides quietly in the background of Judy’s smile but seems to have fought its way to the forefront. 

“I’ve been lonely for longer than I can remember.”. 

Judy’s hand finds hers in the sand and her fingers weave themselves into Jen’s. 

“Me too. God, you’re freezing, c’mere,” Judy says as she shuffles closer and throws a casual arm around Jen, pressing her body tight against Jen’s side. 

“I’m exactly the same temperature I always am, it’s fine.” 

A parody of disapproval plays out over Judy’s face in the moonlight.

“Well, you’re too cold now and also always. I’m clearly slacking off as your own personal rent-a-furnace.”

Jen relaxes a little into the half embrace, allowing herself to enjoy the feeling of Judy pressed against her and heating her cold flesh, warming her old bones. She leans in to it, becoming greedy for more. Now she’s had a taste of it, she can start to remember how she used to feel, before she was freezing all the time, to her very core.

“Thank you,” Jen says to the water. 

“For what?” 

“I don’t know. For coming into my life like this weird, little pot fairy? And for not saying and doing the same shit that everyone says and does that makes you feel more alone than you already are, you know?” 

“Well, thank you. For the same,” Judy smiles, and rocks gently against Jen’s side, “So, one puff and you get all mushy, huh?” Judy laughs at her own joke and Jen relishes the feel of it, light and joyful against her torso. 

“I’m not affected at all, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Look at you, you’re so emotional that even I’m embarrassed,” Judy gestures an arm around the empty beach, “we’re all embarrassed for you.”

“I’m a hardass, you ask any of these people.”

\--- 

They're three months into this comfortable arrangement when Jen comes home from the donation clinic with O- and A+ to last her for the next two months and deposits it in the mini fridge she had installed in her bedroom. She hears Judy come into the kitchen downstairs and start prepping dinner and the sound of another person in her house, using the space and making themselves at home, is deeply comforting to her. 

Jen listens to the clattering of pans and the gentle chopping of vegetables for a while until the tranquility is sliced through by a squeal and a crash. 

She runs. Judy’s cry hangs thick in the air and when Jen bursts into the kitchen at first it appears empty and the scene is a parody of normalcy. She can smell it before she sees anything amiss, the scent of blood hangs thick in the air, fresh and hot and...Judy's,  _ her Judy.  _

It’s a beat before she sees her; on the ground behind the kitchen island and Jen doesn’t know what to do to fix the situation but drop to her knees beside her. She can feel the little world that they’ve so newly created fracturing around her. 

Jen had so easily slipped into this routine that she’d forgotten how fragile it all is, how everything they had built was so temporary that it was already slipping through her fingers. 

Judy lies on the tiles, one hand smattered with dark red droplets, and panic spreads like wildfire through Jen. She looks so small all of a sudden, like a tiny bird that Jen wants to hold in her hands and cradle to her chest. 

Judy groans, her face scrunching itself up in confusion at being on the ground.

“Oh my god, what happened? Are you okay?” Jen fusses at Judy, brushing strands of hair out of her face and hovering beside her nervously. 

“Oh, hey,” Judy looks at her surroundings, seeing the blood on her hand and groaning. “Shit, I was chopping the carrots and I must have cut myself and blacked out, it happens sometimes. It’s just a nick, it’s fine.”

“That really seems like more of a gash?” 

Jen doesn’t know how to make this better but she knows that she has to do something to appease this blind panic that the tiny window of humanity that has opened into her life is about to shatter. 

Jesus fucking  _ Christ, _ the smell. The smell is overwhelming her, saturating the air around Judy, invading Jen’s senses and calling to her, a low, seductive, demanding throb. 

The next time Judy wakes up, she's in Jen's bed and looks dazed at her change of circumstance, like she's searching around for any sense of the events preceding this. 

"Uhhh, what happened?" 

Jen leaps from her perch on the corner of the bed and busies herself with checking the dish cloth she wound around Judy's hand, as though she wasn't just sitting and watching her sleep, "Okay, the bleeding has stopped so I don't think we need a trip to the emergency room. Fuck, Judy, you scared the shit out of me."

"I'm so sorry, I just had a really stressful day at work and I wasn't paying attention and-" and Judy is apologising to Jen as though it's her fault and it's absurd. She can hear in Judy's words all the times that she's been treated like shit by people and for a second, Jen imagines hunting these people (men, she means men) down, ripping their throats out with her bare hands, watching as the life flickers out of their eyes. 

"What? No, stop, you don't need to apologise! I was just worried. You just lay here and rest up. Can I get you anything? If I make dinner it'll taste like shit but... I could order something?" 

Jen doesn’t have the words to tell Judy to stop, that this isn’t her fault and she doesn’t need to apologise. She wishes she could tell her that Jen used to do it too, that cowering to make herself smaller for other people, to accommodate and grovel for forgiveness even when it means making herself less-than. 

Judy looks up at her softly from the bed, with an expression like Jen didn't just find her flat out on the floor and bleeding, like she is making a totally unreasonable fuss. 

"No, I'm fine, I can do it." Judy starts to pull back the comforter which rests over her and Jen has no time for this nonsense. 

"Stop!" She rests a hand firmly on Judy's chest, with just enough pressure to communicate that she's not going anywhere and needs to just stop fighting it, "Just stay here, please. Make yourself comfy. I'll be back in a bit."

When she's confident that Judy has acquiesced to her terms, Jen leaves her to go and deal with the mess downstairs. First she orders a pizza, a large fungi and stilton, Judy’s favourite, before setting about to clear the abandoned ingredients into tupperware. As she packs them away in the fridge, Jen marvels briefly that she owns a fridge _ full _ of food and that her kitchen contains tupperware these days. 

Of all the roles she’s ever played, this must be her finest and certainly the most immersive. It feels like it should be more of an effort to live like this but the opposite is true; Judy has quietly slipped into her life and radically changed everything about it without her really noticing at all. It seems like the most natural thing in the world, for her to be cleaning up food while a human lays in her bed, and Jen can’t face what that means right now. 

When everything else is tidy, she has to face what she’s been studiously ignoring. She takes a deep breath and the smell of it curls into her nostrils and calls to her like a siren’s song.  _ Don’t.  _ She sits down on the floor next to where Judy had lain. Sits next to the small burgundy streak that marks the tiles and closes her eyes.  _ This is a terrible idea. Don’t. Just don’t.  _

Jen sits with her eyes shut, trying to will herself to just wipe up the mess like it’s nothing. _ It is nothing. It’s just a mark on the floor that needs wiping down. It’s fine. Just get a cloth and clean it.  _

But she doesn’t. She sits and breathes in the rich, deep scent of it and it feels intensely personal in a way Jen doesn’t know she’s ready for. She doesn’t want to take anything that isn’t offered to her, that’s the rule that Jen tries to live her life by anyway. And Judy certainly didn’t offer this. It’s too much and Jen feels ashamed of herself for even sitting there. 

Judy didn’t offer it. But she would never know. It’s not like she’s using the blood anymore either, it’s a waste just pooling there on the floor. Jen winces to herself, embarrassed by the game of logic leap frog that she’s playing to try and justify her actions.  _ If you’re going to do it, just do it, you fucking coward. Stop trying to rationalise yourself because it’s pathetic. _

Before she’s even finished the thought, Jen swipes her index finger quickly through the blood on the floor and puts it in her mouth, fast enough that her brain can’t think about it and stop her. The taste of Judy floods her mouth and it’s rich and deep, so quintessentially Judy somehow that Jen lets out a guttural groan. She can taste the sunlight that’s touched her skin, her pain, her joy; everything that Judy is. 

It feels so profoundly intimate, as though Judy was laid bare in front of her, sharing everything with Jen, allowing her access to every part of herself. Suddenly Jen realises that’s all she wants. To know Judy. To know every part of her but honestly, not like this; in stolen moments of shame. She wants them to be truthful and real with each other. And she wants Judy to know her too. 

Jen has never told anyone about herself. In all the years since her death and rebirth, she has never shared what she is with anyone who wasn’t like her already, and the possibility of it blindsides her, a flicker of panic ripping through her. What would it be like for someone to see her? To really see her.

She had always assumed that she would never be able to tell anyone, that this secret would be her burden alone for the rest of eternity. Because, really, who in their right mind would listen to her say those words and stick around afterwards? But that was before she met Judy, this person who sees the good in people even when there is none. Someone who could know her, maybe. Someone who could see her nature and not let it cast everything else into darkness. Jen sat on the floor, running her finger over the small dots of blood and sucking it off until it was gone. 

They eat pizza, they talk, and all the while Jen focuses on how ephemeral this all feels. Judy is so fragile, so human, so vulnerable to the stresses and dangers of this world in a way that Jen is only fully appreciating now. Before, she was only worried about the looming inevitability of Judy’s death but in, maybe, 50 years. She assumed she could protect her until then but now Jen can see that’s impossible. She can’t be there every moment of Judy’s day to make sure she isn’t harmed and now the possibility of Judy being taken from her lies around every corner. It feels utterly intolerable and overwhelming. 

“Hey, do you wanna watch something? There’s a documentary on soon about this little girl in Mongolia who learns to train eagles. It’s supposed to be really empowering.” Judy stares over at her with her soft, brown eyes, unaware that Jen is silently worrying herself sick over the uncertainty of her future. 

“Sure,” Jen manages, quietly. Evidently she doesn’t do a great job of it because Judy’s hand takes hers from the bed and squeezes, running her thumb back and forth across Jen’s skin reassuringly. 

“Hey, I’m fine. Really.” 

Judy is lying in bed recovering, and Jen is the one she’s worried about. Judy weaves their fingers together before turning her attention back to the pizza box. She shares her warmth with Jen; she feels it, spreading slowly through the chill which occupies every part of Jen’s body, a tether to her own humanity. 

Jen doesn’t remember falling asleep but she wakes in the middle of the night to find Judy’s body sprawled across her, her head using Jen’s shoulder as a pillow and limbs clinging to her loosely. Their relationship has always been tactile but this is a new level of physical closeness. Before this moment, Jen would have assumed that having the limbs of another person pinning her down would be claustrophobic and stressful. But this couldn’t be further from what she feels. She’s safe. Maybe this is what she’s always needed, this weight to anchor her to this world and stop her floating away completely. 

Jen moves some hair out of Judy’s face so that she can really look at her, eyes closed and newly vulnerable. Judy looks at peace, like the trauma and tragedies that she carries around with her and hides behind joyful smiles have let her rest for a moment. The night is still and quiet around them and being awake feels like being let in on a secret, a private pocket that’s separate from the normal universe, where the rules are different and they can just exist endlessly outside of time. Jen leans down and, without thinking about it, presses her lips against Judy’s forehead. 

_ Thank you. For being here, with me.  _

She doesn’t think Judy wakes up, not exactly, but she does breathe a soft “mmm” noise and press her face closer into Jen’s neck. Jen strokes a lazy hand up and down Judy’s back. Maybe they would have this and it could be enough. Jen can try to be grateful for the time they have, not mourn a loss which hasn’t even happened yet but that feels so deeply unfair. 

Looking at the delicate lines that decorate Judy’s face, she can see the laughter and pain that she’s lived through but also the years. Years that have been lost, already gone in the ruthless countdown of mortality. 

She hears Chris’ voice in her head,  _ ‘appreciate the time you have with the ones you love’. _

The clock in the hallway mocks Jen with its relentless tick. As Jen lays in the dark, she imagines thrusting her hands into the clock, gripping the hands and stopping the hours, stopping the years, stopping the relentless  _ tick tick tick _ . 

And as she imagines it, she suddenly remembers that she can. 

She could keep Judy if she really wanted. Instead of worrying about watching Judy slowly fade away from her, she could end her life right now. Rip it from her and mold it into something ugly and malevolent. But at what cost? Reaching into the very heart of her and draining it of any trace of softness and warmth that Judy has. Leaving her like Jen, a stone, immune from the ravages of time. Jen isn't sure if she could stand by and watch the vast ocean of humanity that Judy keeps inside her just drain away to nothing. 

Even if it meant that she wasn't alone anymore. And she had been so lonely. So desperately fucking lonely. 

Jen's never imagined before the possibility of turning someone. Her own mortality had been snatched from her so cruelly that she has never thought for a moment about taking someone else's. Jen had taken lives before, lives that weren't offered and weren’t hers to take, but there seemed some additional cruelty in bringing them back afterwards, forcing them to live for an eternity where all they outlive their friends and family, watch everyone they've ever loved age and die while they remain unchanged. It seemed like an impossibly monstrous thing to do to someone. She'd never seen the appeal. 

Until now. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a throwaway comment from Judy that mentions a documentary which I did not make up. It is real and SO EMPOWERING.   
> It's called The Eagle Huntress and honestly it's such a great watch.


	4. Into the Void

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta services provided by @Readtheroomfucko, @bgaydocrimes and @loamvessel.
> 
> All of whom are so beautiful and talented and work tirelessly in helping me make my words better.   
> When you've finished this, go and read the Eurovision AU for some more 'things that shouldn't work but strangely do'.

Judy presses play on the remote, filling Jen’s backyard with the familiar opening guitar riff of Fleetwood Mac. They’re a bottle and a half deep into this evening and it’s taken a not insignificant amount of time to find a suitable album to intersect their musical tastes, and Judy looks thrilled to finally be listening to music and no longer discussing what to put on. 

Judy’s shoulders lift and fall to the opening notes and she grabs her wine glass as she stands up, locking eyes with Jen and holding her gaze as she sings,  _ “Loving you, isn’t the right thing to do.” _

“Oh, we’re doing this, are we?” Jen takes a sip of her wine and when she looks back, Judy is still very much in karaoke mode. 

_ “How can I, ever change things, that I feel?” _ Judy sashays easily about the patio, singing into her wine glass microphone and gently swaying her hips to the rhythm. She comes to sit back down, landing heavily next to Jen with a grin on her face, holding out her now-empty wine glass for a refill. Judy carries on swaying to the music, her voice drifting in and out of singing along, as they settle further into each others’ company. 

When the song ends, Judy shifts to look Jen in the eyes as though she’s building up to asking something monumentally important, “Can I ask you something weird?”

Jen squints at her with lighthearted suspicion, as she gets a flash of the thousand possible questions that Judy could ask her, any one of which would pop this fragile bubble of something close to happiness, “Umm, sure?”

Judy places her hand gently on top of Jen’s as she asks, “Do you know what time you were born?” 

Jen takes a second to halt the internal spiralling she was doing and acknowledge the question Judy has just asked, “Sorry, what?”

“What time? You were born?”

“I....no. I have no idea, sorry.” Jen doesn’t even know for sure what day she was born, let alone the time; back then birthdays weren’t celebrated as they are now. At some point she had picked a day, an arbitrary day somewhere close to what she thought may have been the truth, but there was no way to be sure. The idea of even finding out the exact time she was born was so impossible that it was comical. “...Why?”

“Oh,” Judy looked crestfallen. “I just wanted to look up your natal chart.”

“My...what now?” Judy has never asked her any of the obvious questions that she really should have asked, like how Jen has come to live in this ostentatious house without any obvious form of income or why her cupboards were completely empty until Judy’s arrival. But now Jen’s time of birth was suddenly her probing topic of choice. Typical. As long as Judy is choosing not to see what was in front of her, things can stay as they are. 

“Your zodiac birth chart. If I can find out the exact position of the planets when you were born, then I can work out your whole chart for you and...”

“And tell me my future?”

“Oh yep yes, that is absolutely how this works,” Judy smiles in that way she has that uses every part of her face. 

“Well shit, I’m sorry I can’t tell you. It would have been great to get some winning lotto numbers or find out if true love is  _ just _ round the corner.”

“If you ask really nicely, I’ll get my crystal ball out for you and take a peek. Sorry, I know you don’t believe in this stuff, I just thought it might be fun.”

  
“Sorry to ruin your fun. Hey, did you know in Japan they do that whole personality thing with the blood types?” Judy’s attention is clearly piqued, and Jen can’t help but smile at the focus it’s taking Judy not to get over excited. 

“I did not know that, so I’m gonna need you to tell me everything, please.” Judy folds her legs under herself and clasps her wine glass in both hands, clearly settling in for a full lesson as an attentive student. 

“Well, don’t get too excited, I don’t know if I can tell you everything. Some people just think that you can tell a lot about someone’s personality if you know their blood type. Like, if you’re an A, you’re supposed to be kind of shy and neat. Or if you’re an O, you’re stubborn and confident. I don’t think I can predict your future though, sorry.”

Judy stares at her with smiling fascination, “Okay, so what am I?”

“Well, you’re obviously an AB,” she says and Judy’s eyes immediately light up, “They’re creative and trustworthy little weirdos.”

“So it’s in my blood, huh?”

“Yup, you never stood a chance.” They laugh together and listen to Fleetwood Mac for a moment as Jen fills their glasses, shaking out the last drops of the bottle.

_ Listen to the wind blow, watch the sun rise _

_ Running in the shadows, damn your love, damn your lies _

Judy closes her eyes and sways gently to the music that envelops them in a gossamer cocoon, their own private little world where there’s warmth and wine and music. 

She watches as Judy meanders around the yard, lost in the memory of songs that she’s listened to for years, like the familiarity of an worn-in leather jacket or an old piece of furniture covered in the scratches and stains of a life well lived. Just comfortable, a perfect fit. How Jen feels about Judy is the mirror opposite; Judy is the new shoes that don’t need breaking in, or the new restaurant which is immediately your favourite. She just fits. 

“If I could see into your future, what would you want to know?” 

Judy’s question snaps her out of her reverie. What would she want to know? She feels like she’s already burdened with too much information about the future, in a way you only become when you know all about the failures of the past. What could the future possibly have in store which would surprise her? Judy is here, but she’ll leave. Maybe soon, maybe less soon, but she’ll leave. She’ll still have Chris, in between the endless string of mortal loves that occupy his time, but otherwise she’ll be alone. She’ll relocate again when the neighbours become curious about her resistance to the ravages of time, settle down again, move again. You don’t have to leave behind the people you love if you don’t love anyone at all. It’s easier that way, she tells herself.

She knows all of that already. There’s no more information that she wants. 

“I don’t know. I think I just prefer the surprise. How about you?”

Judy thinks about it for a while before replying, “I think I would want to know if I ever have a family of my own.” 

“Oh, Judes” Jen puts an arm around her shoulder and gently pulls her into a hug, Judy falling easily into her side. 

Jen rubs long leisurely strokes across Judy’s back that seem so natural to hers; the luxury of touch. When she accidentally brushes her hand against the skin of Judy’s neck, she breathes out a comfortable sigh and shifts to drops her head into Jen’s lap, resting there comfortably as though they do this all the time. 

“Will you pet my hair?” 

“Sure.”

Curious fingers venture into Judy’s hair, putting gentle pressure in long trails across her scalp and tracing her fingertips gently round the curves of Judy’s ear. She’s never done this with anyone before, had this kind of relaxed closeness with another person. It feels foreign to her to touch so lightly, not dig her nails in and rip into the soft flesh with her fingers. Jen is a predator by nature and she marvels at this fragile little life which has curled up in her lap. Her lucky little mouse, nestled in the jaws of a lion and asking to be pet. 

Judy makes a contented sigh and Jen feels the gentle vibration of it where Judy uses her lap as a pillow. 

“Can I ask another question?”

“Depends. Is it as important and deeply personal as the last question?” 

Judy shifts and rotates in her lap to stare up at her. 

“Absolutely yes. When do you think it’s okay to start masturbating again?”

She looks up at Jen with a kind of open hearted curiosity, as though she didn’t just ask her about masturbating while her head nestles in Jen’s lap. 

“Um, I’m not sure. Not  _ right _ now, I guess?”

Judy pouts. 

“Not right now? Are you sure? Because it’s been three months and I think I might be dying?” She breaks into a smile. “Sorry, I don’t have anyone else to ask”

Jen goes back to touching Judy’s hair, already feeling the loss of it, silky and soft against her skin. 

“No, it’s fine. I guess whenever you’re feeling it, you should just go for it. Isn’t that what Pastor Wayne says?”

“Pastor Wayne says I should masturbate when I feel like it?”

“No! That there isn’t a schedule for grief. Just do things when you feel like you want to.” 

Jen isn’t sure when exactly her hand had stilled cupping the smooth curve of Judy’s cheek, but Judy takes it by the wrist and presses a series gentle kisses into Jen’s palm. If her words have given Judy tacit consent then maybe it’s because she wanted them to. She isn’t really sure how to process this unexpected gesture but it’s certainly pleasant so she doesn’t see any reason why she shouldn’t just go with it. 

When Judy uncurls herself from Jen’s lap, leaning in and gently pressing their lips together, that too comes as a surprise though she supposes it shouldn’t. It’s just not something that Jen had considered before; it’s not that she didn’t want to, she loves the easy tactility that she and Judy had somehow fallen into, it had just never occurred to her. 

  
  


The times that Jen had been kissed in her life, it had been rough and hard. Men had kissed  _ her _ ; they did the kissing and she was kissed. She lay and opened herself to them and felt their wet tongues in her mouth and when they had left, she touched cold cream to her face to ease the redness their whiskers had left. And this was worlds away from that. 

Judy’s kisses are soft. Her diaphanous lips could be gold leaf, so impossibly delicate that it must have felt very brave to let another person close to them. She curls one hand behind Jen’s neck and it feels like encouragement. And then she’s kissing Judy in return. Jen lets her eyes fall closed as she allows herself to relax into Judy’s touch, really feels the fingers that brush against skin and leave tingling trails of Judy’s warmth in their wake. Their kisses are slow as they both luxuriate in this change of circumstance which seems to have just immediately become natural and accepted just like everything else about Judy coming into her life. 

When Judy’s tongue touches against her lips, it’s a question, not a demand. But she can’t answer immediately; this is new territory she’s exploring and for just a moment it feels too new and it’s too much. 

She pulls back and Judy is right there and smiling at her like she understands. 

“Hi.”

“Hey.”

Jen leans to touch their foreheads together and they just breathe as she takes a moment to catch up on what just happened. A tight knot of tension that she didn’t even realise she was holding onto begins to unwind, her muscles softening and her hands wanting more, wanting to touch what they’re suddenly missing. She reaches out to Judy, finding her waist and pulling her closer, wanting more though she’s not exactly sure what she wants more of, but Judy seems to understand; of course she understands. She shifts and moves a leg across Jen’s lap to straddle her, and instantly she feels grounded and secure under her weight. 

Jen’s hands naturally come to rest around Judy’s waist and when she looks into her eyes, Judy’s expression is so full of affection and calm that Jen feels absolutely intoxicated by it. She needs more, and seeks out Judy’s mouth with her own. Kissing, not being kissed; stepping into these strange lands with newfound confidence. This time, when Judy’s tongue cautiously touches against her lips, she welcomes her and feels Judy’s breath huff hot against her cheek in response. 

She doesn’t know how long they stay there, sharing their air back and forth and exploring the shape of each other, but when they break away, Judy seems utterly undone. Her pupils are blown wide and her cheeks are stained a scarlet that trails down into the flushed skin of her neck. 

“Would you want to take this upstairs?” Judy murmurs, and Jen nods immediately because that seems like the perfect way to continue whatever is happening here for as long as possible, but it’s a while longer before the connotations of the question really sink in. 

Judy takes Jens hand, kissing each of her fingertips before taking hold of it in earnest and leading them to Jen’s bedroom. 

When they cross the threshold, something changes. Judy sits on the edge of the bed and looks up at her with an expression that is openly lustful but patient, waiting for Jen to come to her, and Jen feels a desperate need to have her and it feels like an earthquake. Jen crosses the room in a few quick strides and presses their mouths together again, wanting to taste her, wanting to take her. She feels like her body has been asleep for hundreds of years and is only now waking up. It’s a confusing rush that spreads through every part of her, but she’s determined to explore the feeling. Doing that with Judy feels like a thrilling mix of very safe and very dangerous.

She pushes Judy back onto the bed, climbing on top of her and this part at least feels totally natural, having her prey pinned beneath her, spread out for her and at her mercy. Judy’s hair spreads out on the bed, a messy chestnut aura  surrounding her face as she looks up at jen, eyes heavy lidded and face so unguarded that Jen can barely stand to be the focus of it. 

One of Jen’s thighs finds its way between her legs and Judy grinds up into it, shamelessly seeking out friction. Their mouths crash together again and Jen feels powerful; she’s in control this time and dictates the speed and pressure of their kisses into an ebb and flow of building heat between them, lips ceding to teeth ceding to lips. 

Judy writhes underneath her, a slow undulation to seek out her own pleasure, while she breathes her moans and sighs into Jen’s mouth. Jen’s hand finds its way under Judy’s dress, needing more contact, more skin, just  _ more _ . She drags her hand further, intoxicated by the heat of her, and takes hold of the firm flesh of Judy’s thigh which yields slightly under the pressure of Jen’s fingertips. Finding more purchase, she thrusts her thigh harder into Judy who gasps at the added pressure, throwing her head back and bearing the flush skin of her neck.

_ Control yourself. _

Jen can hear the pounding of Judy’s heart, see the throb of her pulse beating beneath the thin skin and it’s almost overwhelming. She thinks back to that first day, the day they met, before they really met. When she had hunted Judy through the streets of Laguna, caught the faint hints of her scent on the air, the scent which now overpowers and assaults her senses so deliciously. That day she wouldn’t have hesitated. That day, she could have pinned Judy like this and felt her body writhing beneath her and taken what she wanted. But then Judy would have just been a facade to her; a face, limbs, the shape of a person. She would have had no idea about the deep well of compassion that Judy holds inside her, the laughter that spills out of her and echoes back to her twofold. 

She wants Judy but not with the finality that she’s wanted people in the past. She doesn’t want to seize everything that Judy is and take it for herself; she doesn’t want to leave her with nothing, but treasure her and make her safe, take her into the fortress that will protect Judy from the passage of time that will wither and fade her. 

Delicate fingers find their way to the buttons on Jen’s shirt and fumble at them until Jen pulls back a little to allow Judy access. She wants to be closer and the thin fabric feels like it’s keeping them too far apart. She begins to untie the thin cord which fastens Judy’s dress when she hears a gasp. 

“Oh my god, Jen! What happened to you?”

_ Oh FUCK.  _

Judy’s fingers trace over the angry scar that marks the base of her neck, where the skin still ripples unnaturally in thick, dark waves where it’s been torn from her. Jen retreats immediately, propelling herself to the opposite side of the bed and folding her knees up into her chest; she must look like a scared little child, small and pathetic on a mussed landscape of white linen.

Jen isn’t sure what her plan had been, whether she was going to tell Judy one day or just carry on until it became too obvious that time hadn’t changed her. Of course she had thought about the issue, but going endlessly back and forth had proven fruitless and frustrating. Then she was distracted. All it had taken was the slightest hint of physical affection for her to become utterly unravelled, letting her guard down and forcing her hand. 

But it’s too soon, she’s not ready to have Judy torn away from her but Jen knows already that the lie is over now. 

“I...I need to tell you something.” Jen starts and suddenly the words turn to ash on her tongue, “But I don’t know how.”

Judy climbs up the bed to sit beside her, taking her hand and squeezing. 

“Hey, it’s okay, you can tell me anything. I hope you know that.”

“You say that, but I’ve never... I’ve never told anyone before and I just know that this is going to end badly. I don’t know if I’m ready for whatever this is to end. And you know that’s really hard for me to admit.” Fat tears forge wet streaks down Jen’s cheeks. She wasn’t entirely sure she still could cry; the last time must have been some time during the Eisenhower administration. 

“Hey, hey now, whatever it is, you can’t get rid of me that easily; moving is a huge pain, ya know? I’d have to look around a BUNCH of rentals and I don’t want to be the kind of  _ loser _ who has a roommate.” 

Jen gives a small, reluctant laugh through her tears.

“Hey, there she is.” Judy leans in to her, using her free hand to wipe away the tears that run down Jen’s face leaving salty trails behind. 

“Oh, my god, you don’t need to look after me.” Jen gently bats Judy’s hand away from her face.

“I can do what I want. Now please, whatever it is, you can tell me.” 

Judy finishes wiping Jen’s tears away and Jen takes hold of her wrist, placing Judy’s hand on her chest. She lays her hand over Judy’s and presses it firmly against her, “Tell me what you feel.”

“I don’t understand.” 

“Just tell me. What do you feel?”

“You’re kinda chilly?”

She puts more pressure on Judy’s hand, palm flat over Jen’s heart.

“I don’t have the words to say what I need to say. So please. What do you feel?”

“Wait...” Judy looks at Jen with confusion, “Jen, I don’t understand. Why can’t I feel your heartbeat? Do you have one of those weird pacemakers that stop you having a pulse? Because I watched a documentary about those and it was so inspiring.”

“No, Judy. I don’t have a pacemaker.” Jen talks slowly, her words becoming more strained and staccato as she tries to communicate, knowing that she’s failing utterly. The terrible fear which hangs above her  is looming and pendulous. “Ju st take a second. My heart. My scar. I’m so cold all the time. I just need you to think because... I can’t say it. I just can’t. _ Please, _ Judes.”

It feels like begging now, begging Judy to understand so this lie can be over. The bitter truth — the one that will instantly detonate the foundation of their friendship —j ust needs to be out in the open now, because this is too much to bear. It should never have gotten this far between them anyway. How did this happen? What the fuck was she thinking? Clearly she wasn’t thinking, that was precisely the fucking problem.

Judy pulls back from her quickly, yanking her hand out of Jen’s grasp, her whole body withdrawing away from her. 

“You can’t possibly expect me to believe...”

“Please don’t say it. But yes... And I’m sorry.”

Judy looks at her and as the incredulity gradually makes way for fear, tears spring to her eyes.

“Are you... Jen, are you going to kill me? Is that why I’m here?” 

As the words come out of Judy’s mouth she looks small. So impossibly small that Jen could hold her in the palm of her hand, trembling and afraid. 

Now she knows that Jen is a monster. She has seen Jen’s true nature and Judy thinks she’s going to destroy her. Judy’s lips begin to quiver, the heavy drop of a tear welling in her cupid’s bow; her words, jagged arrows that have pierced her, shot her through and the wounds begin to weep. The casual inevitability of it all breaks Jen’s heart.

“No! Oh my god, no, I don’t want to hurt you, Judy. Please know that I don’t ever want to hurt you.” Jen reaches out to touch her arm and it’s immediately snatched out of her reach. 

“I need.... I think I have to go,” Judy gets up slowly, not turning her back on Jen for a moment like she’s trying to escape the jaws of a deadly predator which, Jen supposes, is exactly what’s happening. 

“Please, no! Stop, stop, stop, please don’t go.” 

Jen thinks briefly about stopping her; grabbing her wrist and just fucking making her listen until she understands. She just needs a little more time. She needs Judy to understand that she doesn’t want to hurt her, she wants to.... No, she can’t. It would only make it worse. 

When you try to free a frightened animal from a trap, they can die from shock anyway. They don’t understand that you’re trying to fix this, they can’t see your good intentions through the smokescreen of fear. 

Judy nears the door and all Jen can think about is remembering. Remember every detail because this is the end. Judy will walk out that door and she’ll never see her again so  _ think _ . The lights in the room reflect off strands of her hair, making the blonder highlights shine, a cool blue edge added by the moonlight reflecting off the pool outside. The smell of her; sandalwood and caramel and fresh vanilla, but underneath that, the light sheen of salty sweat, the musky throb of adrenaline and the delicate scent of Judy’s arousal, a precious relic from that other world where Judy desired her.  _ Remember this. Remember everything.  _

Jen stays there in her bedroom, curls up on top of the covers as though she doesn’t even deserve the reassuring weight of the comforter. She lies perfectly still with her eyes closed and thinks about how things could have happened differently, if she hadn’t been so god damn stupid. How can someone so fucking old still be so fucking stupid?

At some point, she must have fallen asleep because then she’s waking up in a room, soft with the light of sunset. She can’t tell how long she’s been asleep but her phone battery has died so presumably a while. She lets it charge as she showers, washing away the thick blanket of regret which clings to her skin. When she leaves the bathroom in a cloud of steam, her phone tells her it's Thursday. __

_ Fuck, I slept for six days? No wonder I feel like cold shit. _


	5. Lucky Little Mouse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thank you to @bgaydocrimes for her tireless beta efforts and @readtheroomfucko for emotionally supporting me through trying to write...whatever this is.

Jen isn’t ready to venture out of her room into the rest of the house just yet. It feels as though if she opens the door and steps into the vacuum Judy left behind, she’ll immediately disintegrate. 

She hasn’t eaten in days and her joints feel like chalk, grinding and crumbling with every movement. It’s a deep ache which consumes her. Not pain. Not yet anyway. But it would be soon, if she didn’t have stocks ready in the small fridge humming away in the corner of the room. 

It’s only really happened once, the torturous lack, and she’ll never forget the  _ pain  _ of it. It was early, back when she was hungrier than she is now and didn’t know the rules yet, the survival techniques that allow her to live a life under the radar. 

When she was very young, not in human years but in her second version of existence, Ted’s presence was inconsistent at best. He would drop in, feed her, fuck her, and leave her. He occasionally imparted some sort of wisdom, guiding her in how to navigate this new world that was the same but entirely different and more terrifying than before. Sometimes he would disappear for weeks or months at a time. In those times, she would mostly feed on the rats that were as abundant in New York then as they are now. Often they carried disease which made her sick and weak; too rank with their sickness to hunt but her body unable to fight it without fresh blood. 

Day and night became meaningless in the dim light of her small room, her body wracked by the endlessly ringing bell of pain. Ted was gone and she was dying. 

She had one last hope, one final push for survival before every last scrap of energy she possessed had left her. She had slowly, slowly lifted her exhausted body from the small bed and every part of her screamed at the movement. Her flesh seemed tight and unforgiving, her bones ground themselves angrily into each other and somehow, through the fog of agony, she made it outside. 

The streets had been quieter since the sickness arrived. People stayed in their homes, hiding from the cholera which had begun to torment the city months before.

Usually they had rules, strict rules on how, when, and where to feed to avoid being caught or leaving a pattern, but things had changed. Surly men with wooden carts roamed the streets, calling for the dead to be brought out by their family and slung onto graceless piles of corpses. The rules were different now that dead bodies were ten a penny. Jen made it down the street, stopping every few steps in a futile attempt to relieve the pain in her feet, searing and hot. 

There was a narrow alley nearby, filled with the small, overcrowded factory workers’ houses and she stopped at the first door she came to, feebly pounding her fist against the door. She leaned against the doorframe, weak and unable to support herself, knowing this was her last chance. If no one answered she was sure she wouldn’t be able to make it to the next door, just metres away. As her body began to slide down the door frame, a man appeared saying words her brain was too thick with fog to understand. He lifted one of her arms over his shoulders and helped her indoors. 

When Jen came back to her senses, she found herself in a cramped living area with two chairs, a small wooden table, a little metal stove in one corner and the pale, lifeless body of a young man in her arms. He couldn’t have been more than 25 at a push, dressed in a worker’s uniform that amounted to little more than rags, the lines of his face carved out by a life of struggle and blackened by the dirt of the city. He had no idea he invited a scorpion into his home. 

He’d shown her openhearted kindness and she’d taken his life. 

When she looks at her hands to see the blood that stains them, it is always his that marks her the most deeply. She never wants to see the true face of hunger ever again.

She fetches a bag from the fridge, ripping the plastic open slightly with her teeth and sitting back on the bed as she feels it restoring her; nourishing and repairing her sore body. When there’s nothing else keeping her there, she resigns herself to going downstairs to pick over the rubble that awaits her. She can’t recall now how she used to fill her time  _ before; _ it already seems now like she has far too much of it. 

Maybe six days’ sleep wasn’t enough. 

She pads downstairs in her robe and slippers, fetching herself a mug and pouring coffee beans into the maker that still sits on her countertop.  _ Shit, maybe she really is a fucking macchiato.  _

She puts some on music to break up the crushing silence of the house. She’s unsure if the screeching, discordant tones of Béla Bartók are better, but they make the place feel a little like a horror film which seems appropriate. Grabbing her laptop from the counter, Jen starts to make her way outside when she hears a key turning in the front door and freezes. 

“Oh! You’re here,” Judy stands in the kitchen doorway, looking surprised to see Jen in her own house.

  
_ “You’re  _ here. I thought you’d left.”

“I did. But... then I came back. Work was at capacity so...” Judy trails off, looking lost where she stands in the expanse of the kitchen.

“Well, I hear rooms open up all the time.” 

“Yeah.”

She can’t believe that Judy’s just standing there when she should have run a million miles away from Jen by now. 

“I was just going to make a coffee and take it outside. If you wanted to join me, maybe we could... talk?”

Jen feels absolutely at a loss with how to behave around Judy now. She isn’t used to being on the back foot and this all feels like a complicated dance that she doesn’t know the steps for. She’s shown Judy her darkest secret and now she’s exposed and vulnerable. 

“Well, it’s 9:30pm so I might skip straight to wine, if that’s okay with you?” 

Judy is offering an olive branch, and the sense of relief that washes over Jen is immense. 

“Shit, you’re right. Fuck, I  _ just _ woke up.” 

Jen grabs a bottle of white from the fridge and walks out to the yard, hoping that Judy will follow but not looking back to check. Jen flicks on the TV, trying to find The Facts of Life. Maybe they can go through the motions of normality until they find a new way to behave around each other again. She hears Judy before she sees her, trotting out of the house, two wine glasses in hand. The wine is poured, the TV is stared at and studiously they ignoring the enormous fucking elephant that stands in the space between them. 

“I wish I had a Mrs. Garrett to tell me everything is going to be alright,” Jen muses out loud. How nice to have someone to defer all responsibility to, who can let you know that everything will be okay. 

“Everything  _ is  _ going to be alright.” Judy’s face overflows with earnestness as she turns to look at Jen, really  _ looks _ at her for the first time since that night when their mouths were on each other and her skin felt like it was on fire.

“...It’s not as good.”

“No?”

“No.”

Laughter, and the sheer relief of it makes Jen feel drunk. 

“Can I give you a hug?” 

It takes a moment for Jen to understand the words coming out of Judy’s mouth, so deeply unexpected that she thinks maybe she must have misheard them. She just nods her assent and Judy falls into her arms. 

“I’m sorry.” Jen says into Judy’s hair as they lean into each other’s bodies, holding on to each other. 

  
“I’m sorry I reacted like that; it’s not your fault.”

“I can’t believe you’re here. I wouldn’t be.” 

Judy pulls away from the hug so she can look at Jen face to face. “Well, I’m not you.”

“I’m glad you came home, Judy.”

While the words hang in the air between them, Judy curls a hand lightly around Jen’s jaw and presses a chaste kiss to her lips, and it tastes like understanding. 

Judy touches their foreheads together. 

“I want to ask you things.” They’re so close but Judy’s eyes flutter closed, pressing in to the contact between them as she steels herself. ‘I’m scared, but I’m not afraid of you’, she says without words. 

“I want you to ask.” 

Jen’s ready. She wasn’t, not for a very, very long time, but now it feels like she can do this. She can step out of the shadows, allow someone to really see her. Judy had caught a glimpse of her darkness and she came back. 

Judy switches off the TV and takes a long swig of her wine to steady herself. 

“How old are you, really?”

“Well, that’s fucking rude.”

  
“You said you wanted me to ask you questions!”

“Clearly you didn’t get the memo about not asking women their age!” She laughs but the laugh trails off; now it’s time now for honesty and it catches in her throat. “I was born in 1765.”

Judy’s eyes widen a little in a flare of surprise but she seems to fortify herself almost immediately. She’s obviously trying to make the effort; glossing briskly over the surreal enormity of this for the sake of rescuing what they have. “Oh wow, so you’re… uhh-” Judy grabs her phone to do a quick calculation, “255! Damn, you don’t look a day over 45, hot stuff. Your skin care routine must be in-credible.”

“Thanks, it’s just sunscreen and a really expensive serum.” 

Maybe this is fine, actually. This new normal.

Judy asks who made her and she tells her about Ted, the story of their time together is a vast lake that she skates across, a smooth stone skipping across its surface, skimming past the very highs and very lows but still, she watches as tears well in Judy’s eyes. Judy lifts herself abruptly from the sofa and goes back inside for a moment to fetch another bottle of wine and when she returns she’s gathered herself.

“Can you turn into a bat?”

“I don’t think so but, I lost the instruction manual sometime in the 1800s.” 

“Oh, yeah I always throw those out too soon and then it’s a huge pain!” 

If this is what it’s going to be like, Jen thinks, then maybe she can make it through this without imploding with the crushing shame of it all. Judy is offering her the gift of easiness and it’s so precious that Jen hadn’t allowed herself to even hope for this. She knew this wasn’t going to be it; it wasn’t a door that she could swing open to allow Judy to peer in briefly before locking her life, her secrets, her past, away forever. This was just the first test. A gentle little poke to the bear. A friendly examination of circumstance.

They’re laughing still, ebullient and light, when Judy asks, “Okay next question and it’s a biggie: do you get glittery in sunlight?”

“Eat my fuckin’ butthole, Judy.”

“Well, I would but you need to buy me dinner first.” 

Judy asks about food, because of course she does, that’s her language. How can Jen eat food? Why does nothing nourish her the way it should? “Nothing happens” she says, her hand making an up-down motion at her torso. Judy’s face scrunches up in mock horror. 

It’s strange to hear someone else talk about what she is, see herself through new eyes. She realises there are so many questions that she has no answers to, never even thought to ask when she had the chance. Now it’s just her and Chris. Maybe there are more but she’s never met another one like her and she wouldn’t know where to find them if they were out there. Women still can’t casually lurk in dark alleys without attracting the wrong kinds of attention, even if they’re there to find a predator. It’s not the sort of question that you can just throw out there to a stranger in a supermarket or a bar.

From tentative beginnings, they establish a new rhythm together, from curiosity to gentle ribbing. She doesn’t know what exactly she anticipated but it certainly wasn’t this. No part of this evening was going as predicted and as they talk, Jen begins to relax into it. Judy is here, she isn’t repulsed. 

“Am I safe, here, with you?”

The question pierces her with its bitter inevitability. It’s the only question, she supposes, the one she asked when they were there, in her room, when Judy’s eyes were wide with terror.  _ Are you going to kill me?  _ And she can’t lie, not to this strange, brave woman who sometimes seemed so small, but had caught a glimpse and come back. So she tells her. Tells Judy that her immortality has a price, it has a bodycount but she is trying to be better. She has a code now; she knows how the world works and how to live now without taking. Jen tries to make her understand that she would never, ever intentionally hurt her. But in between the lines, they can both see what’s lurking. 

_ Never intentionally.  _

_ Look at your hands and see the blood that stains them. _

Jen can’t tell what she’s thinking. Doesn’t know whether Judy is masking some new loathing towards her or maybe just hasn’t decided yet. She could be weighing up her options still. Maybe forming a plan to hand her in to the Laguna PD, like the murderer that she is. Perhaps she’s just waiting to escape, to run from her as soon as Jen’s back is turned and wash her hands of this terror that Jen has laid at her doorstep. A dead rat dropped onto an unappreciative lap. There’s another option too but somehow it’s more painful. That Judy might run is painful but assumed. Her departure is expected. But then, when has Judy ever done what’s expected of her?

There’s only one more question that evening and it’s when the mood changes. Fangs. In sorting fact from fiction, Judy hit on a reality and her battleship was taking on water. She wants to see them but Jen refuses, only for retaliation to come in the form of those puppy dog eyes that they both know Jen can’t say no to. A hit, a very palpable hit.

The muscles aren’t as lithe as they used to be, not now she’s pacified herself, trying not to snatch, but take with an open palm. When she was young, she would barely feel it. On a summer’s day she would catch the scent of a girl - sun drenched skin and effervescent happiness - curling on the breeze. Her fangs would stand to attention of their own accord, unwanted and embarrassing like a teenage boy’s undisciplined erection. Now it is an effort but a controlled effort; within its specific rules her body is her own now: defined, exact, obedient. She flexes slowly, pushing, pushing, until she can feel the release with an erotic shiver. It feels natural and right, in a way that gives such a rush there should surely be shame attached, like she’s suddenly standing naked, unveiled and unprepared for scrutiny. 

_ Just sit. Wait patiently. Wait until the next move becomes clear.  _

Jen sits. During a hunt, she can wait like this for hours. No breath, almost no heartbeat, perfectly silent and still. When the moment comes, you’ll just know, and until then the main concern is not to scare your quarry. When Judy looks at her, the lightheartedness that she’s been studiously trying to maintain all evening has drained away from her face. Jen had assumed she would see fear. Revulsion, maybe? But Judy’s expression is something else entirely, focused and intense. There doesn’t feel like anything to say and she doesn’t want Judy to be afraid when this is so new, so she does nothing. 

Judy draws closer to her in quiet fascination, a hand at Jen’s jaw and a gentle pressure as Judy drags the pad of her thumb across one of the dull points, her eyes flaring. When Jen breathes again, she’s briefly overwhelmed by the scent of her; like a platter of fresh oysters and the freedom of air over the ocean Judy’s arousal surrounds them like a fog. Judy’s mouth finds hers and suddenly it’s a tongue scraping across the pointed tips of her teeth and Judy’s groan filling her mouth. Judy still wants her and that want is visceral, hanging heavy in the air. Jen feels it in the hands that move to touch her neck and find their way into her hair; the warm chest that presses up against her with an undulating pressure as Judy takes deep pulls of air between kisses. 

And then she knows;  _ it’s time to move.  _ She lifts Judy, strong hands scooping her up eliciting a squeal of surprise and delight that hangs in the air. Judy wraps her arms loosely around Jen’s neck as they go to Jen’s bedroom. Jen suddenly feels intensely protective of her, cradling Judy’s body in her arms like this, precious as a trapiche emerald and infinitely rarer. Maybe she can set her in an ornate platinum ring or encase her in glass, protect her in a room with diffused lighting and a heavy curtain that can be drawn back, ‘Be careful, don’t touch. She’s too valuable to be marred by the careless hands of a stranger or a harsh beam of sunlight.’ 

Jen deposits her on to the bed and they’re here again but the paradigm has shifted. Judy takes her hand, sucking Jen’s fingers in her mouth and the wet heat of it - the rippling wave of Judy’s tongue against her cold skin - immediately makes Jen feel like she’s drowning. She wants to worship her, make Judy writhe and moan under her touch but this is too new and it feels like a tipping point with everything she wants at stake; fuck this up and it’s back to the bone-deep isolation of her life _ before. _ She just needs a compass to navigate this unfamiliar landscape. 

“I want this, Judes. I really want this, but honestly I have no fuckin’ idea what I’m doing here.”

“It’s okay. Just touch me like you touch you.” While she’s speaking, Judy takes Jen’s hand in both of hers, stroking it between her palms and running long trails down her fingers. 

“Yeah, no, I don’t really  _ do  _ that so-” Jen trails off, embarrassment creeping in and crumbling the nonchalant facade that she liked to project to the world. Her body had always been a vessel for the pleasure of others, a passive receptacle for men to deposit their joy into, and it had never really occurred to her that she had the capacity for that pleasure too, under her own hand.

“Don’t worry, I’ll show you. C’mere.”

From the bed, she watches as Judy tugs on the cord that fastens her dress, her eyes locked on Jen. Judy seems to love this, being watched, being wanted, opening herself up like a blossom. She looks strong; soft skin covers the hard curve of muscle that sweeps down her arms. Her abdomen is toned into a gentle ripple which Jen knows if she could just press her fingers into it, there would be some give before meeting solid resistance. For all of Judy's soft, floating floral dresses, she has never appreciated before how muscular Judy really is.

“We start off gentle,” Judy drags her fingers lightly across her body, tracing paths up and down her arms, across the taut skin of her belly and over the thin fabric that covers her breasts. Jen wants to touch her, replace that hand with her own and see for herself how the goosebumps rise and fall in the wake of her fingers, but she can’t. She needs to watch, see every detail of this show that Judy is putting on for her, and her alone. Judy’s arms fold delicately behind her back as she flicks the clasp of her bra, and for just a moment she looks bound, displayed like a butterfly pinned by a scientist’s cruel hand.

Jen must gasp because Judy’s face lights up with a smile, the delicate lines that decorate her skin bowing to provide an ornate frame for it. Judy’s hands find her own breasts and she strokes and kneads them, showing her what she likes. Jen is an attentive student; she memorises every move that makes Judy bite down on her lip or suck in a harsh breath. She watches the muscles and tendons ripple beneath the surface of Judy’s skin as Jen builds the pressure of her touches. 

It almost doesn’t feel real to her, this whole scene, that Judy would allow her to watch something so profoundly personal and intimate, and Jen's body doesn’t know how to react. It’s been dormant for years, a bystander to sexuality, any sort of desire pushed down so deep that she’s forgotten it’s even there, even possible for her to feel these things she’s watching Judy experience. It's like being a teenager again, figuring out where to put these disorganised and chaotic emotions which feel so new they overwhelm her. 

Judy’s hands seek out the waistband of her underwear, raising her hips and sliding them off her legs in a fluid movement. Jen closes her eyes for just a moment, overstimulated and overpowered by this image of Judy, her skin an infinite plain of muscular sand dune, and when she opens them, Judy’s legs are spread wide in front of her and she looks wanton.

“Jen, I want to see you,” Judy says, her voice husky and low, “Please?”

As Jen unbuttons her blouse, Judy’s stare burrows hot into the trail of skin being revealed in its wake, her fingers dipping between her legs as she begins to spread herself, opening up for Jen to see every part of her. She plays with herself, her fingers teasing and light as she watches Jen undress for her. It's surreal watching the obvious desire that exudes from Judy at seeing her. The unchangeable outline of her body has been with her for so long that it's just become a fact; she has long outlived any negative or positive emotion towards it and now it just exists to her as a given, a neutral. But Judy's gaze burns all sense of neutrality away from her; she feels charged and powerful in a way that would have been indefinable to her just moments ago. 

When the black fabric of Jen's bra falls away, she moves her hands to her breasts, and begins to move, exploratory touches that mirror Judy's. Jen's fingers graze across the sensitive skin of her nipples, drawing them into hardened peaks and she can feel her body leaning in to her touch, reconnecting physical sensation with the indistinct memory of pleasure that has been packed away in a distant corner for too long. 

Seeing her like this seems to encourage Judy and two of her fingers dip inside her, emerging glistening before disappearing again, slow thrusts that her hips begin to roll and push up into. Judy's eyes flutter closed briefly with the sensation and when she opens them again, her gaze is heavy lidded and dark. 

"Watch me and do what I do," Judy says as she encourages her.

Jen’s hands explore the plains of her own skin, peeling off her trousers before coming to settle between her legs and she gasps at the wetness that she finds there, coats her fingers in it as she luxuriates in the velvet softness of her own sex. She circles at her entrance a few times before pushing her fingers inside herself and her body seems to welcome the intrusion, her hips pushing into the pressure of their own accord. In a few moments she’s fucking herself in earnest and  _ fuck  _ it feels incredible. The room is filled with the rough pants of their breath, laboured and heavy, and the utterly fucking indecent sounds as they fuck themselves in front of each other. 

Judy’s head falls back as she comes close to her peak and Jen feels like every muscle in her body is vibrating with want. 

“Oh god, Judy. I want you. I want to taste you.  _ Fuck.”  _ She needs her, wants Judy like this so badly, wants to take this image in front of her into her own body. 

“Yes Jen, oh god, yes. I want you to, please.”

Judy sounds desperate, her unrestrained pleas lighting a fire in the pit of Jen’s belly, and she needs more right fucking now. She moves in on Judy, reaching her legs first and kissing needy trails along every inch of hot skin she encounters. Judy’s mouth finds hers and her kisses are desperate and uncoordinated and she teeters on the brink of her own abyss. Judy needs this. Judy wants her. She wants  _ Jen.  _

She leaves Judy’s slack and greedy mouth and trails kisses down her neck. She scrapes the sharp points of her teeth teasingly over Judy’s pulse point and instantly Judy cries out, hips bucking involuntarily and hard. The fear she felt earlier, the soul rotting worry at not being able to please Judy, has drained away entirely and she feels powerful and in control. Every light touch to Judy’s skin elicits a reaction as she comes close to falling apart on Jen’s bed. 

She moves down Judy’s writing body, exploring the sweat sheened landscape of her skin with teeth and tongue. 

“Oh god, Jen, I’m so close.” Her voice, low and licentious.

Jen locks her gaze on Judy’s as she trails kisses down her torso, this time with purpose, moving towards the hand that Judy is using to frantically fuck herself. Jen grabs her wrist, removing the fingers from Judy’s body eliciting a reluctant whine that stops the moment Jen replaces them with her own, two fingers sliding in easily where Judy has fucked herself open and ready for her. Judy’s body quivers around her fingers, almost painfully hot and the softest thing Jen can remember having touched. She knows already that she’s addicted to this, won’t ever be able to get enough of this silken softness, these sounds which emerge from Judy in a stream, the smell of her sweat and arousal that hangs thick in the room. She could spend years like this, exploring Judy’s body, pleasing her, fucking her until she’s a quivering mess under Jen’s hands, learning every inch of her body by heart. 

Her hand wet with the juices that spill freely from Judy’s body, Jen strokes across her inner thigh, the skin there glistening and wet in its wake. 

“Can I?” Jen drags her teeth across the skin there, seeking permission. 

“Oh please, yes, fuck yes.”

At once she slides three fingers into her and sinks her teeth into the slick flesh of Judy’s thigh. Judy cries out and the delicious sound of it stays in Jen’s ears as the rich femoral blood floods her mouth and all of her senses are saturated with Judy. Through the haze, she feels Judy begin to pulse around her fingers, her muscles turning taut and unyielding as she tips over the edge, free falling into bliss and Jen can taste the flood of endorphins on her tongue as she drinks from her. Her own hand reaches down, and it takes barely anything, the briefest of touches before she’s falling too, her body entirely out of her control, helpless as a rock beneath a crashing wave and all she can do is ride it out. 

Jen marvels at how pleasure can sound exactly like pain. 

She laps at the mark she’s left on Judy’s thigh, two neat puncture wounds which pulse lazily before slowing to a stop. When she’s cleaned away the dribble of scarlet that’s fallen free, she moves to Judy’s centre, licking at her skin shiny with Judy’s arousal, mindlessly focusing on the drag of her tongue across Judy’s skin, the only point of contact that matters, the rest of her body drifting and unreal to her now. Judy’s hand finds its way into Jen’s hair, lazily stroking at her scalp as she hums in pleasure. 

Encouraged, Jen continues, reaching the wet apex of her thighs and running the flat of her tongue across the sensitive folds there in broad, thick strokes. It’s intoxicating and Jen needs  _ more,  _ pushing her tongue inside and fucking Judy in slow pulses. The moan that escapes Judy is guttural and earthy, rumbling out of her throat and filling the space around them. 

“Jen, yes, I think I can-” her voice breaks and cuts out as her fingers find her clit, pressing desperate circles into it while Jen carries on licking into her, pushing in as far as she can until Judy’s back arches high, her breasts quivering as her breath escapes in short, strangled gasps. Judy clenches hard and Jen fucks her through the resistance as she rides this tide of pleasure and emerges on the other side. 

Judy’s body goes lax on the bed, muscles entirely unable to support her as she collapses into a puddle with a laugh.

“Holy shit. I’m going to need you to kiss me right now before I fall asleep.” Judy demands, in as much as she can demand anything in a voice that’s drenched in kindness and light. 

Jen climbs up Judy’s body and takes her face into her hands. She looks  _ fucked.  _ Sweat has turned her bangs into wet tendrils that cling to her forehead and she looks up at Jen with lazy eyes, drunk on the endorphins flooding through her veins. They kiss and it’s deep and slow and luxurious as they wrap themselves up in one another, their bodies heavy and uncoordinated. 

For the first time in her second life, Jen feels warm; saturated with a warmth that is deep and nourishing. It won’t last forever, she knows, but right now this moment is everything to her. The past and the future no longer matter in this little bubble that Judy has created for them, untouchable and perfect, where they can simply exist, together. For a little while.


	6. Princess Bubblegum and Marceline

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thank you to my boo @bgaydocrimes
> 
> There's one more chapter left of this, which is all written and I'm just editing it now so it'll probably be up tomorrow or early next week so you won't be hanging on too long.
> 
> Thank you for all the nice comments so far! They have provided some much needed serotonin in these bleak times.

The relaxation that sleep brings makes her look so young, all the lines of joy and pain that adorn her face soothed into a softness that lets Judy radiate peace. Her hand, balled into a tight fist, is shoved under the pillow, pressing it into her face like a child with a blanket; Jen could cradle her in her arms like this, rock her while she slept, protect her like a newborn from the perils that she imagines are waiting for her in the outside world. Jen didn’t require sleep, usually just using it to pass the time more than any physical need for it. And seeing Judy like this, she thought she might never sleep again; Jen could just lie here, listening to the loose hums and sighs as Judy slept beside her. 

The bed they lie in is king sized and, back when Ted was the one sleeping there, it had seemed luxurious to have plenty of room for two people to spread out: midnight clashes of sprawling limbs, battling for victory. Now it seems like a brutal inconvenience. Jen wants to draw together the sides of the bed, the parallel lines of their bodies merging into confluence, skin flush but never seeming close enough. All the open space now a no-man’s land, cold and inhospitable. What a luxury it seems now to have a small bed. Maybe they can lie beside one another for long enough they become vines, growing in spiral and bound, stronger together. 

Jen watches Judy’s eyelids flickering in dream as she adventures in her sleep. Flakes of crumbled mascara dust her cheeks. When she wakes, Judy will wipe them away with her fingertips, leaving little black trails behind but for now they can rest easy, as she does. Jen wonders what she dreams about and, for one deeply narcissistic second, wonders if Judy dreams about her. Jen hasn’t dreamt of anything since she was alive, really alive, and she misses it; half formed stories, a whole night time world that she no longer holds the key to. She barely even remembers now what it was like to wake up back in the real world with a surreal tale in her head and the lingering emotions that dissipate and fade through breakfast, but she remembers enjoying it. Now when she sleeps she dips into nothingness, slips on the inky void like a cloak. The best she can hope for is time travel, dipping out of consciousness one day and waking up in another. 

Jen presses her body tight against the naked expanse of Judy’s, slow breaths huffing hot against her face as she crowds her. It feels like the most impossible luxury to witness Judy like this, to be allowed to see her so slack with sleep and touch her, to absorb her warmth in abundance, not just stolen moments here or there. Judy is so overflowing with life that she has some to spare that Jen can borrow and try on for size. In Judy’s arms, she feels almost human again. Almost. 

Jen still can’t quite believe she’s here. Judy’s made it to the centre of the minotaur labyrinth, walked past strewn corpses and ignored the scraping of sharp talons at the walls and now she's here, in Jen’s nest at the heart of it all. 

There’s a soft groan and Judy’s eyes flutter open as she eases herself back into consciousness, and the first day of this fragile new thing between them. Judy looks at her, still hazy through the veil of recently dissolved dreams, and smiles. 

“What’s your stance on pre-toothbrush kissing?” Judy’s voice is still gravelled and rough . 

“Pretty positive, generally I think.”

Judy’s mouth is on hers the moment she gets the words out and Jen can feel her smiling against her lips. They lie together, slowly running their hands over each other, getting to know one another's bodies without the charged urgency of the night before. 

Jen runs her fingertips gently across the marks that she left on Judy’s thigh, “How are you feeling this morning?”

“A little sore. But in a good way.”

Judy presses her thighs together, trapping Jen’s hand between them and it only takes the slightest nudge of Judy’s hips for Jen to get the message. 

Exploring Judy’s body like this, while feeling out her own sexuality, feels entirely different in the diffused light of the morning. There’s heat, certainly, but without the sense of desperate inertia. Jen feels comfortable now to move her hands in new ways, and watch Judy closely as her body responds to her touch. Jen slides two fingers inside her, watching as her eyes flutter closed for a moment, her breath hitching. Judy’s so responsive to Jen that every movement is a roadmap, detailed and easy for her to follow. She can feel when Judy’s muscles begin to flex and tighten, the lazy roll of Judy’s hips turning into something more demanding and needy and Jen feels powerful when she chooses to slow down, allowing that urgency to retreat before building it up again. 

She has no idea how long it lasts, lying there in her warm bed as she learns to play Judy’s body like an instrument, but Jen can’t remember ever being happier than this. She can feel the memory taking shape, carefully recording all the small details to be packed away and displayed, the main attraction at the museum of Jen’s life. She can’t forget any part of this, can’t ever allow this to become like that perfect day at the beach, her family there but half faded, their faces obscured by the thick clouds of time. 

When Judy comes, it’s with Jen’s fingers buried inside of her and Jen’s lips on hers to capture the open-mouthed cry that rips free from her. She can hear Judy’s heart pounding so loudly it’s deafening, like the blood she drank from her is singing in reply, reaching out to Judy from inside of her, connecting them on a level she doesn’t quite understand but never ever wants to let go of. 

As Judy lies with her eyes closed, breathing hard while she swims in pleasure and Jen presses soft kisses onto her forehead, her nose, her cheeks, her chin; it feels like a privilege. She carries on, moving down Judy’s neck, tasting the dewy sweat that clings there, salty and fresh. She presses the flat of her tongue against Judy’s pulse point and just feels it throbbing there inside her, rising and falling and rhythmic and alive. Jen peels back the covers, exposing Judy’s breasts and cupping them in her hands, feeling the weight of them, the skin that’s softened with age and moves as smooth as water under her touch. 

As she comes back to herself, Judy’s hand finds its way into Jen’s hair, tugging her into a lazy kiss. 

“You’ve tasted me, now I’d like to taste you.” She pushes at her shoulder and Jen acquiesces, falling back into the bed and leaving herself open and unguarded to whatever was going to happen next. 

Judy's body moves heavily at first as her limbs shake off the veil of orgasm and sleep, then becomes more agile as she swings a leg over Jen, settling her weight onto Jen’s hips and bringing both hands to Jen’s face. 

“I want to touch you and you tell me what you feel, okay?”

Jen’s body had always felt defined and knowable, all her life but especially during sex. Sex had always been something that happened to her, sometimes unpleasant, sometimes pleasing enough but always just an event, which occurred and then was over. What she feels now blurs the lines of what she has ever even thought of as ‘sex’; the purposeful pounding of men seemed worlds away from this moment, where the sweep of Judy’s fingers across her collarbones makes her shudder and writhe.

As Judy trails kisses down her neck, Jen’s skin feels like a crackle of electricity, wild and uncontained. She tries to tell Judy, give her some indication of what she might like or want but everything seems so new and overwhelming that Jen just wants to feel  _ everything.  _ Anything Judy wants to do to her is exactly what she wants because when Judy touches her, when Judy looks at her, it isn’t at all like she’s taking something from Jen. She feels  _ more _ than she was before. 

Judy seems to genuinely delight in touching her, sometimes closing her eyes and just pressing her whole face into Jen, laughing softly into the flesh of her torso before kissing the skin there and moving on. With a delicious slowness, she makes her way down Jen’s body, settling between her thighs and locking eyes with her through her bangs which are still messy and wild. Judy holds her gaze, kissing slowly down Jen’s thigh, closer and closer to where Jen wants her mouth, needs her now. She watches as Judy’s fingers graze through the wiry thicket of her pubic hair; Judy has the hands of an artist, broad and strong and capable, hands that can take her vision and express it on a blank canvas, hands that create, not destroy. They’ve roamed over her body in delicate and meandrous touches, now finding her centre, parting her, exposing her to Judy entirely. 

With a smile, Judy moves to her thigh, baring her teeth and biting down into the bank of flesh there before kissing her way back to finally touch Jen in earnest, and Jen can’t help but cry out when Judy’s tongue licks into her. It takes some time for Jen to connect the physical sensation of what she’s feeling with pleasure; how can Jen’s body and Judy’s tongue create a sensation so much greater than the sum of its parts? She examines the question with voyeuristic distance, almost scientific in her processing of what she’s feeling. 

The most immediate sense of pleasure comes from just watching her there, arms wrapped around Jen’s thighs with fingers pushing dotted depressions into the flesh, Judy’s perfectly straight nose buried low in the triangle of hair between Jen’s legs, her eyes hooded and black, so obviously aroused by trying to please Jen, being allowed to taste her like this. Watching Judy look so submissive for her, Jen feels powerful and strong, like she wants to test her, maybe buck her hips or clench her thighs around Judy’s face just to see how she might react. The feeling of control, that at any moment she could take charge, dictate exactly what Judy should do and how, stirring a part of Jen so deeply hidden she had no idea it even existed. 

All of a sudden a wave of arousal hits her, crashing hard against her chest, the muscles of her stomach lurching abruptly and almost painfully, her legs shaking and out of her control. With pulsing streaks of pleasure cracking through her, Jen grabs fistfuls of white linen into her hands, twisting into the sheets to have something to push back on a little, something to stop her body just evaporating into the atmosphere. Judy’s hand finds one of hers, locking their fingers together tight and holding her, anchoring her as she begins to fall and the sensation is so intense that for a second it’s terrifying until it’s so delicious she can’t breathe. 

Judy presses the broad flat of her tongue against Jen’s clit, holding it there as Jen rides out the last shudders and ripples of the orgasm that seems to have drained her and left her limp on the bed, an empty chalice. Judy clambers up Jen’s body, coming to rest directly on top of her, the weight of her soothing in a way that bleeds deep into the core of her. Judy buries her face into the scarred skin of Jen’s neck, gently kissing at the jagged scars and emitting a soft, satisfied hum. 

“How do you feel?” Judy whispers, so close to her ear that she can feel the movement of the air pushed by her lips. 

“God, Judes, I feel  _ warm.  _ I’m always so fucking cold.”

She feels more healthy and alive than any time in hundreds of years and already she’s thinking about the ending. Maybe they have this a little while, maybe for fifty years, but then it will be over and maybe it’s better if she never remembers what it was like to feel warm and happy like this. If she’d never awoken this part of herself, she would never have to mourn its loss. Maybe that would be better. But it’s too late now. Now she’s awake. 

“Hey, can I ask you a question? What were you back then? A rogue warrior?” 

Jen snorts a laugh at her question but Judy continues unabated. 

“Tinker? Tailor?”

“Oh no, we're not doing this.”

“Soldier?”

“ _ Judy _ .”

"Spy?”

“Oh my god, can you stop?”

  
Judy shifts to sit up a bit little to look at her properly. 

“C’mon, seriously I’d love to know.”She looks so earnest, so genuinely curious about Jen and her life that Jen can’t resist her. 

“I was a widow. I had two children, my boys - Charlie and Henry. I was a mother. But I’m sure you can’t think of anything worse than lying here listening to me monologue about my kids.”

  
“I can’t think of anything better,” Judy wraps her arms around Jen, leaning in to her. "Tell me about them?" 

"We had Charles Jr. first, named after his dad, and then little Henry came along a few years later. Henry was my perfect, little angel; he was a musician and poet, so he was obviously never gonna be the breadwinner of the family, ya know? He never got married. I was always so worried about him being lonely, but I think he was probably just gay. If he was around now I think he could have been so happy, but back then things were different.

"Charlie was such a fuckin' asshole when he was a teenager but then got a good job at the bank and met the woman who would become his wife and he just… I don't know, flourished. He became  _ a man,  _ he raised a family of his own, looked after me and his brother as long as he could."

Jen hadn't thought about her boys properly in so long. They were with her of course, every day, but the million little details of their lives she kept locked away to avoid the pain of it. 

"They sound like great kids" 

Judy wipes a tear from her cheek and it's only then Jen realises she's crying.

“Yeah, they really were. I miss them so much. I guess in a way I'm lucky; most parents don't get to watch their kids grow up and get old, live out their whole lives. I do like knowing how things turned out for them. I just wish things could have been a little easier." She doesn't say it out loud but she knows Judy hears what she's saying, 'I watched them live out their whole lives and when I watched them die. Mortality spared me and took my children in exchange.'

They lay there together and talk about them. Judy asks questions and Jen answers, sometimes spinning off into anecdotes that she's never told anyone before, never had anyone  _ to _ tell, she supposes. It feels good, this honesty. She feels intoxicated by it, meandering down the long forgotten streets of the past with Judy there beside her, their fingers intertwined. 

\---

“This is absolutely the last time I let you pick the venue for one of our little soirees. How do you even know about this god forsaken place?” Christopher shouts far too close to Jen’s ear as he tries to overpower the pounding of the doom metal playing in the bar around them. “I can feel my cochlea hairs trying to murder each other inside of my body.”

“I come here to relax. If you punch your tastebuds hard enough with these shots, it’s almost like you can really feel something for a change.” Jen relishes Christopher’s outrage, feeding on his disapproval like an antisocial older sister showing off in front of their parents.

Christopher sits delicately on the wooden barstool, swiping his fingertips across the table between them. He sniffs at them cautiously before wrinkling his nose and placing his drink down on the table anyway. 

“What did you want to talk about? It’s not like you to call at such short notice, oh ancient, brooding one. Tell me of your troubles.”

“Oh fuck you, I do not _ brood.  _ My thing is more of an office-appropriate take on the classic gothic stereotype; business goth-chic,  _ thankyouverymuch.”  _

“Whatever you say, Marceline. Not sure that was loud enough for the bikers in the back to hear you too”

“Oh fuck you.” They should do this more often. Even if Jen isn’t allowed to pick the venue anymore. “I wanted to talk to you about something and you’re the only person I trust to tell me if I’m being a fuckin’ asshole.”

“Is that because I’m the only person you trust?”

“Don’t push it, buster.” Jen rolls her eyes at him fondly, picking up another shot, this one called something like ‘Satan’s hellfire’, knocking it back and feeling the tingle that fizzes at her throat. He used to be the only person she could trust; now she hopes that he’s one of two people she can trust. “I guess, I’ve kind of... met someone? And I just wanted to ask for your opinions on the prospect of… you know.”

“Oh! My! God! I do know! Well, Ms Jennifer Harding as I live and breathe, I never dared to dream this day would come. And who is this lucky little David who has charmed Goliath?”

As long as she can get through the next few minutes, Christopher can air all of his primary teasing to make way for some serious discussion before an inevitable secondary round of ribbing later on. 

“I met her at a... grief group.”

“You WENT!! Isn’t Pastor Wayne just terrific? Whenever he comes by the church to throw down a sermon, it’s always a packed house!” 

“He was, at best, fine. And there I met Judy and, well, one thing turned to another...”

“Oh, you got yourself a little snack too, huh? Honestly, I’m so thrilled for you, it’s about time you had some fun.”

“No! No. It’s not like that. She’s not a  _ snack.  _ She’s more of… an entrée?” It only now occurs to her that an open and honest conversation on ‘whether or not she should turn Judy’ maybe shouldn’t be undertaken at a busy metal bar. But it’s too late now. 

Chris gasps in theatre hyperbole. “If you want my blessing to bring in a new member of the family then you KNOW you already have it. Even if it has only been ten minutes. If you want to be a lesbian vamp stereotype then that’s your call, but just talk to her, okay? You’re not like him; you know this isn’t your decision.”

“How the fuck did you get so wise?” Jen pushes another shot across the table to Chris, this time an unnaturally vibrant shade of green and called something like ‘goblins revenge’. They clink the glasses and shoot them back. 

“That’s just what happens when you have our lord and saviour to guide you, Jen.”

  
“Shut up and drink, Doyle.”

\--- 

It’s not until days later that she’s worked up enough courage to have the conversation and she feels nervous as a schoolgirl; it’s pathetic. Jen arrives home to find Judy in the pool. It’s been scorching for the past couple of days and the temperature has finally dropped, leaving the late afternoon fresh and breezy. Jen stands at the windows watching her for a while, mesmerised by the long lines of her piercing through the water which cascades out in a wake behind her. She knows Judy’s body now. She knows all the broad shapes and the tiny wrinkles; she knows the patch of platinum white hairs that sprout at the nape of her neck faster than Judy’s hairdresser can try to fight them; she knows the story of every scar that patterns her. All the little perfect imperfections that make up the physical reality of Judy, so much more than just the vague idea of a person, idealised and imprecise. 

Jen pours them both a glass of wine, taking them out into the yard and sitting at the edge of the pool while Judy swims. Jen dangles her feet into the water, grateful for a moment to steel herself. She sips at her wine and watches as Judy notices her and glides over, grabbing at Jen’s ankles and giving them a quick tug, not hard enough to actually pull her into the pool fully clothed, but enough to give the suggestion that she could, if the desire struck her. 

“I want to take you to dinner later.” Jen blurts out, awkwardly without any preamble.  _ Smooth.  _

“Oh! Great! That sounds delicious. Tell me more.” Judy’s eyes glitter as she looks up at Jen from the water, her legs rippling and distorted as they gently kick beneath her, keeping her buoyant. 

“Table’s booked for 7. Like, medium fancy attire, I guess?”

“And that’s all I get to know?”

“And that’s all you get to know.”

  
“Well, okay. But you’re going to have to help me pick an outfit then.” Judy slowly pushes off the side of the pool, taking her wine with her as she drifts away in the water. 

Later, they get ready together. Judy tries on dresses and shoes for Jen, does a little tap dance in reference to a joke Jen doesn’t understand, from a film she hasn’t seen. It’s one thing finding someone that you can have a good time with, but to be doing nothing of consequence, to be bored and have someone who will make it good regardless? Well, that’s more than Jen ever thought she might find. Judy is a lamp that casts a little more light on everything in her life and emits an aura of warmth.  _ Sounds like something Judy would say.  _

She’s booked a private dining room at a restaurant Judy’s talked about wanting to go to before. They follow the waitress in and the room is airy and bright and overflowing with greenery, plants trailing down the walls and twisting across the industrial light fittings. The walls of whitewash exposed brick support an ornate, orangery glass roof with black wrought iron, and the whole effect comes together to make Judy look like a Disney princess whose shoulder could become adorned by butterflies or tiny birds at any moment. She sits against a backdrop of miniature topiary and creeping vines, draped in a long emerald dress which hugs her shoulders and bust, then drapes free down the rest of her, giving brief hints of the shape of Judy as she moves like liquid. She looks like Gaia, otherworldly and like she’s always supposed to be here, surrounded by this. 

“I cannot  _ believe  _ you managed to get us a reservation here. Look at this place!”

They settle into their seats and Judy babbles away happily, touching the crockery and glassware to admire them all individually. They order the tasting menu and so begins a long, steady stream of tiny plates with delicious morsels being delivered to them with a designated wine pairing, impossibly beautiful, little bursts of flavour that make Judy’s face light up with every mouthful. They spend the meal talking about everything and nothing, toothless jokes about how Judy must have forgotten an anniversary to be treated like this, and it’s all building towards that thing Judy isn’t directly asking about. Jen fortifies herself, letting wine ease the tightness in her throat that tries to silence her, and when the last of the plates have been cleared away, they sit with the rest of their wine and Jen knows that it’s time. 

“I need- I want to ask you something and I don’t want you to answer now. I want you to just listen and think about it and answer in, like a week or a month or however long you need, okay?”

  
“Um, sure, okay.” Judy immediately looks worried, like she’s been scolded and sent to the principal's office. 

“These last few months have been some of the best of my fuckin’ life, Judes. And I feel like this is  _ something _ , you know?” Now the first few words of the speech that she’s practised are out, there’s no going back and she just needs to push on through without thinking about it too hard. “So, I needed to ask you if you would ever consider becoming… like me.”

The colour drains from Judy’s face as she realises what Jen is saying but she does as she’s asked and says nothing. Just sits and listens and understands that Jen just has to say what she needs to say. 

“I was never given the choice. And honestly, I don’t think I would have chosen this if I’d be asked. So much of this life has been fucking  _ hard. _ But things would be different for you. I would help you and guide you and you’d never change or grow old. You wouldn’t ever be alone like I was. We’d be family. But as I said, I don’t want you to answer now. Ask questions if you want, think about it, and whenever you’re ready, just let me know, okay?” Jen stares at Judy, tries to gauge her reaction but Judy just looks at her. “You’re allowed to talk now.”

  
“Oh! Okay, I don’t really know what to say. Um… I’ll think about it?”

“Okay.”

Jen drains the rest of her wine and doesn’t taste it at all.


	7. Will You Drink the Wine from my Heart?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, thank you to my main boos @bgaydocrimes and @readtheroomfucko for their unwavering support and beta services. Also thank you to @knebworth for additional help, betaing and opinion providing services.

In the following weeks, Judy does exactly what Jen has asked of her, asks questions and seems to fully consider Jen’s proposition. Honestly, it’s fucking agonising. When she asked Judy to take her time and think about it, she didn’t really take into consideration that she would have to be so careful not to influence her decision and that every question, her tone and exact wording, would lead to a spiral about its connotations, second and third guessing herself trying to decide which way Judy was currently leaning. 

Jen feels as though she has torn out her heart for Judy, presented it to her on a silver platter and now that platter just laying on the kitchen counter weeks later, bloodied and rotting, and endlessly prodded at before the big decision on whether to accept it or light it on fire. 

When Judy declares that she’s ready with her final decision, Jen isn’t sure whether it’s just herself or the both of them who want to delay the inevitable by agreeing to a picnic. All the anxiety Jen has about the event she tries to channel into organizing every tiny detail. She thinks if she can put all her energy into finding the perfect blanket or the perfect fuckin’ plastic champagne flutes or whatever, she won’t have the capacity to really think about anything else. And it works, for a little while. She doesn’t quite have Judy’s flair for event planning but she figures if you sink enough energy into any project, eventually something good will probably come of it. 

She finds the perfect location; a remote beach just down the coast, hidden by the jagged cliff that embraces it. A sea cave hides in the cliff face, a smooth depression where the waves have eaten away at the rock, called it back to the sea to be ground up and spat out as sand in some other part of the world. The hollowed stone gives welcome shelter from the sun and coastal winds, and will hide them away enough that even if someone else does venture onto this little beach, they would still be alone. 

Jen goes a little early to set everything up, which is mostly just an excuse to anxiously pace around, away from the watchful eyes of Judy. The real heat of the day gives way and it's fresher now, when Jen stands back and takes in her handiwork; rocks draped in points of yellow light surround a soft cocoon area of blankets and cushions, everything laid out and ready for Judy's arrival with the food. That was the agreement, food and everything else. At the time, she was pleased with the split in labour but now Jen felt like she'd done too much, overthought it and gilded the lily. Judy should be set in nature, not whatever this bastardised crossover is that she's created. 

It's just as she's considering ripping it all down, just laying out a single blanket with an ice bucket instead, that she feels her phone vibrate in her pocket. Judy is here. 

Jen catches sight of her stepping carefully down the narrow path, her dress decorated with tiny daisies billowing gently around her as she carries the sizable picnic hamper with both hands. Jen reaches her, kisses her, takes the hamper and guides Judy over to the little nest that she's built for them. It feels as though all of her worries about the future are written all around her in detail like grotesque cave paintings, screaming at her from the ancient rock. She wants to apologise but when she turns to tell Judy  _ just have a drink and I can fix it _ , she sees tears in her eyes. 

"Jen, it's perfect."

And then Judy's arms snake around her and suddenly it's okay; they're at the beach, the ocean is placid as it kisses the sand and retreats, the sun is low and making the water glittery and golden. It's over now. No matter what her answer is, the emotional roller-coaster that Jen's been strapped to the front of for weeks now is finally over. She presses Judy to her, buries her face into her hair and just breathes in this last moment of uncertainty. 

"Did you bring the ice? I'll pour us a drink." 

Jen sits and Judy falls bodily against her, so trusting and affectionate. They sit quietly for a while, listening to the soft crashing of the waves and watching the sun becoming heavy and fat on the horizon. 

"I don't think I can do it." Judy says the words quietly and to the ocean, like it's a secret between the two of them and Jen is eavesdropping. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry it took me so long to figure out. I thought I could, for a while, but I can't."

"Okay. I always thought it was a long shot." Jen doesn't know what to say in the quiet moment that lurks in the wake of Judy’s answer. Jen wasn't naive enough to assume Judy would say yes. Jen's life had been fucking hard and lonely; she was hardly the best advertisement for immortality. If the situation was reversed, Jen would probably have said no too. It feels natural in its inevitability. "Do you want to go walk in the waves?" 

"Yeah, I do." Judy wipes at her face, trying to hide the evidence of silent tears. 

They walk hand in hand along the small beach with the surf licking at their bare feet and it's peaceful like Jen has never experienced. The calm of  _ knowing _ washes over her like the waves. Judy tugs at her hand for a moment, drawing Jen out of her reverie. 

"Hey, Jen. I just wanted you to know that just because I can't spend the rest of eternity with you, doesn't mean that I don't want to spend the rest of my life with you." 

Judy let's go of her hand, drops down onto one knee in the wet sand.

"Judes, what the fuck is happening right now?" 

"Since I was a kid, all I ever wanted was a real family. And then you came into my life and I just feel like there was this huge energetic shift. You saved me. You're so strong and protective and kind. You make everything make sense to me now, you're the first person in my life that has ever made me feel really loved; you're my person. Jen, would you be my family? Would you be my wife?" 

She fishes a ring box out of her dress pocket and holds it open for Jen, her eyes impossibly huge and pleading. The ring sitting in the box is beautiful, a baguette cut stone the same colour as Jen's eyes and a simple gold band with a single tiny shard of diamond gleaming in it. 

Judy looks at her with an expression overflowing with love and the rippling undercurrent of uncertainty and worry, as though Jen hadn't already asked her to spend the rest of time together. 

"I would be so honoured to be your wife."

Judy leaps up with a squeal, throwing the full weight of her body into Jen's with such force that it knocks them both backwards into the sand. Judy wraps her arms around her, presses wild excited kisses all over Jen's face until Jen's hands find Judy's face, stills her and brings their mouths together to taste this moment that will change everything for both of them so fundamentally. 

It's during this moment, this perfect, crystalline moment, that an overenthusiastic wave rushes up the beach, covering them with salt and spume and sending them into fits of laughter as they scrabble away and run back to their little camp. She drapes a blanket over Judy's shoulders thinking she sees a shiver and Judy tries to share it with her. 

"I don't think a blanket is going to warm me up at all. You have it."

"I want to share with  _ you _ ."

They huddle together, a messy lattice of blankets covering them, and let the enormity of what just happened settle in for a little while, Judy's head resting against her shoulder as they stare out towards the horizon and watch the stars come out as the night closes in. 

Jen can't resent Judy for her decision. She's so deeply connected to her spirituality that it seems needlessly cruel now to have tried to deny her of an ever-after, to have tried to turn the circle of life, into an infinite, disconnected line. She deserves one day to return to nature, become part of the flowers, the birds, the earth. She deserves the chance to find out if anything is waiting for her when she finally steps into the great unknown, even if that means leaving Jen behind. Judy is so profoundly human that suggesting she become anything else is suddenly grossly offensive to Jen. Judy's humanity is what she loves the most about her and maybe that's irrevocably bound with her mortality. 

"I'm sorry. That I can't come with you, I mean. I just… whenever I can afford IVF, I just really want to try again for a baby. And I don't think I'm strong enough to go through what you did. I don't know how anyone is strong enough to go through that."

"You don't have to save up. We can start as soon as you'd like. Consider it a wedding gift. Oh, speaking of, I think there's something you forgot."

Judy twists to look at her with the wide eyes of panic before she takes in Jen, holding her left hand out splayed for her. She slides the ring on, marvelling at the volume of the message it speaks to her; _I am_ _yours and you are mine,_ so loud that it is almost audible, Judy's voice in her head and gentle as the ocean breeze _._ It seems like the grandest of luxuries to be able to hear it every time she looks at her hand. 

"I want to give us a baby. I hope I can do that for you."

"Oh Jude, I hope so too. We can try as many times as you want to and then we can try and adopt. We'll have lots of kids. Well, not  _ lots.  _ Not more than, like… five?"

"Holy shit, you'd have five kids?! I didn't even consider negotiating for more than three."

"Three is fine."

"No. No! We agreed five. Five is fine." 

Jen feels like she isn't ready to just completely give herself over to the euphoric haze of this moment just yet. She's been caught up in it to this point but Jen thinks that if she doesn't speak up now, it'll be too late and she needs Judy to know that she has an out if she wants to take it. 

"Judy. I need to know and please don't take this the wrong way but… are you sure? I don't want you getting married just because you feel guilty about turning me down. I've hurt people. You're way too good for me; you don't need to do this. ‘Til death do us part is a really long time to be stuck with a huge fucking cunt like me."

"Nice try but you're my huge fucking c-word now. And I've hurt people too."

"Stop, you know what I mean."

"Hey, I asked you to marry me because I  _ desperately _ want to marry you. I don't need some manic pixie that's going to drag me to, like, a water park or whatever every weekend. I want you and all your fire and your darkness and your pain."

Jen doesn't know what to say to that. Maybe there isn't anything really to say so she just manages a quiet, "Okay."

Jen looks out to the endless expanse of the ocean and for a while she can only think in disjointed superlatives: happiest, lightest, most beautiful. Jen realises now that maybe she was stuck, anchored in the old world that didn't fit and pinched at her edges and chafed at her in complaint. But this was a new day. 

"Will you still love me when I'm old?" 

"I am much, much older than you and always will be."

"I guess you're kind of a cougar then, huh? I've always wanted to date an older woman."

"JUDY!" 

They laugh together and the melancholy that was quietly lurking beneath their happiness begins to dissipate. Judy unpacks the food that she's made for them, laying out endless little containers, so many that she thinks 'Judy was nervous about today too'. 

The sun goes down and they light candles, setting them on the smooth rocks around their feathered nest.

\-----

It's a little while later when they're back on the same beach where Judy proposed. They're draped in white and Judy's dress dances excitedly in the breeze. They stand in front of a humanist celebrant; generically spiritual which pleases Judy and an irony which amuses Jen. Christopher attends as the witness, maid of honour, maid of honour, and flower boy. Adele arrives as the ring bearer and Jen thinks it's the worst thing she's ever seen and Judy gasps in such pure and unadulterated delight that it becomes the water mark of joy that the rest of their lives are measured against. 

Jen slides a wedding ring onto Judy's finger and looks up to see her cheeks both wet with tears. 

\------

She had bought a little stand especially for her phone and setting it up now, it feels like a deeply bizarre preparation for this evening. Judy lies on the bed for her as Jen tries to focus the camera properly, and watching Judy slowly undoing her buttons through on the screen makes the job substantially more challenging. 

"Okay yeah, I think… Yeah, I think it's recording."

"Good, come here then and fuck a baby into me."

"Jesus fucking  _ Christ _ , Judy!" 

"Too much?" 

"You're at a hardcore 12 and I'm going to need you at, like, an narrative-driven erotica 7, okay?" 

They fuck for the camera and it's awkward until a little later when it's not awkward at all anymore and suddenly it's hot. They perform for one another, flirting with future versions of themselves through the lens, and making each other writhe and lose themselves for the camera.

It begins as a one-time thing and flourishes into a record of their bodies, of how they change or don't over the years. 

\-----

The house is always loud, always filled with laughter or squabbles or splashes of playing in the pool. Their first is Edie, who has all of Jen's hard edges and all of Judy's sensitivity which sometimes makes the world a very sharp place for her to exist in; it takes years for her to build up a hardened exterior that protects her soft heart. Then comes Stephanie who is only ever referred to as such on her birth certificate and called Stevie every day of her life. She devotes her life to science of the natural world, and speaking out for the creatures that don't have a voice of their own and every day, her mothers are impossibly proud of her. 

A few years later, the twins arrive and at first they're so tiny that no one thinks they'll ever be able to keep themselves alive. They name them Adam and Lilith and when they grow, they sometimes speak their own language although Judy tries desperately to decipher and learn it. One day, Jen finds a small book that Judy had made, an illustrated dictionary of a language that only exists in their home and as soon as she opens it, a tear drops into the middle of one of the drawings, smudging the ink slightly. 

One day Judy comes home from work with a small girl in tow named Eve. She's ten and was being raised by her grandmother until she fell and broke a hip. She has no other family except for a mother who's in prison and Jen sees immediately how important it is to Judy that they preserve and protect her precious childhood. They agree to look after Eve until her grandmother recovers but her health takes a turn and Eve never leaves. They frequently find her curled together with Edie, thick as thieves. When her mother is released from prison, Eve cries. Only once she talks of leaving but never follows through. 

When they're old enough, they're given the choice to become like Jen. Edie is the only one who says yes. 

\------

Jen wheels Judy through the pastel painted corridors as they look for room 7. 

"I had to tell the lady at reception that I'm your daughter, so that's a pretty fuckin' creepy dynamic we get to enjoy now."

"Didn't want her to think that I'm the cougar between the two of us, huh?" 

"Exactly. You'll always be my toy boy. Toy… Girl? Gross. Oh, here's number seven."

The room is relatively comfy and spacious and only smells a little medical. Judy covers the walls in her art and knows all the nurses by name in the first week. In the gardens, there's a large pond that Jen takes her to sit beside and smoke pot when the nurses are on their lunch break. 

A cormorant dries its wings on the rocks every day and they name it Micheal. 

\-----

When Jen moves back home, she finds the tapes. A box filled with memory cards, labelled and marked with dates in Judy's handwriting. She picks a random one and puts it into her computer. Judy appears on the screen, she's maybe 60 in the video. She talks to Jen about her day, reads her a love poem she wrote, tells her a joke. Every video has a different message, thousands of messages that Jen had no idea existed, spanning a lifetime together. 

\------

Jen decides to plant a cherry tree. In the spring, the blossom reminds her of Judy's favourite dress and when it's mature enough, Jen carves their initials into the trunk with a little heart around them, then chides herself for the rank sentimentality of it. She watches the birds eat the fruit on the top branches and fly away to feed their families and she imagines Judy being pleased that she can sustain her own community of birds and insects and squirrels. 

\-----

When their grandchildren have children, Jen tells them all about her. About her kindness and how she always saw the good in people, even if it wasn't there. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hurrah, we made it! Thanks for coming on this ride with me, pals.
> 
> Here is the ring that I have decided is The One   
> https://rocopenhagen.com/rings/produkter/rings/nord-green-ring


End file.
